Massive loops in thermal SU(2) Yang–Mills theory: Radiative corrections to the pressure beyond two loops

Abstract

We address the loop expansion of the pressure in the deconfining phase of SU(2) Yang–Mills thermodynamics. We devise an efficient book-keeping of excluded energy-sign and scattering-channel combinations for the loop four-momenta associated with massive quasiparticles, circulating in (connected) bubble diagrams subject to vertex constraints inherited from the thermal ground state. These radiative corrections modify the one-loop pressure exerted by free thermal quasiparticles. Increasing the loop order in two-particle irreducible (2PI) bubble diagrams, we exemplarily demonstrate a suppressing effect of the vertex constraints on the number of valid combinations. This increasingly strong suppression gave rise to the conjecture in arXiv:hep-th/0609033 that the loop expansion would terminate at a finite order. Albeit the low-temperature dependence of the 2PI 3-loop diagram complies with this behavior, a thorough analysis of the high-temperature situation reveals that the leading power in temperature is thirteen such that this diagram dominates all lower loop orders for sufficiently high temperatures. An all-loop-order resummation of 2PI diagrams with dihedral symmetry is thus required, defining an extremely well-bounded analytical continuation of the low-temperature result.