qq' -> qq': a second look at the IR divergences

Abstract

The transport properties of the quark-gluon plasma is important both from the point of view of the astrophysical systems and the heavy ion collisions. Therefore, accurate calculations of the elastic scattering cross-sections of $qq' \to qq'$ and $ q\qbar' \to q\qbar'$ processes are required. At the tree-diagram level exchange of massless gluons leads to divergent cross sections for such processes. An effective way to remove the infrared divergence is to introduce a Debye mass as an infrared regulator into the gluon propagator for the thermal gluons. In this work we find that at the two-gluon exchange level such a technique fails to remove the divergences. In a chiral symmetry broken phase the mass could be introduced following the standard procedure which cures the divergence. But in a chirally symmetric phase chiral invariant mass of the fermions needs to be considered.