N-Point Vertex Functions, Ward-Takahashi Identities and Dyson-Schwinger Equations in Thermal QCD/QED in the Real Time Hard-Thermal-Loop Approximation

Abstract

In this paper we calculated the n-point hard-thermal-loop (HTL) vertex functions in QCD/QED for n= 2, 3 and 4 in the physical representation in the real time formalism (RTF). The result showed that the n-point HTL vertex functions can be classified into two groups, a) those with odd numbers of external retarded indices, and b) the others with even numbers of external retarded indices. The n-point HTL vertex functions with one retarded index, which obviously belong to the first group a), are nothing but the HTL vertex functions that appear in the imaginary time formalism (ITF), and vise versa. All the HTL vertex functions belonging to the first group a) are of $O(g^2T^2)$ , and satisfy among them the simple QED-type Ward-Takahashi identities, as in the ITF. Those vertex functions belonging to the second group b) never appear in the ITF, namely their existence is characteristic of the RTF, and their HTL's have the high temperature behavior of $O(g^2T^3)$, one-power of T higher than usual. Despite this difference we could verify that those HTL vertex functions belonging to the second group b) also satisfy among themselves the QED-type Ward-Takahashi identities, thus guaranteeing the gauge invariance of the HTL's in the real time thermal QCD/QED.