Non-Abelian Electric Field Correlator at NLO for Dark Matter Relic Abundance and Quarkonium Transport

Understand

We perform a complete next-to-leading order calculation of the non-Abelian electric field correlator in a SU($N_c$) plasma, which encodes properties of the plasma relevant for heavy particle bound state formation and dissociation, and is different from the correlator for the heavy quark diffusion coefficient.

• The calculation is carried out in the real-time formalism of thermal field theory and includes both vacuum and finite temperature contributions.
• By working in the $R_\xi$ gauge, we explicitly show the results are gauge independent, infrared and collinear safe.
• The renormalization group equation of this electric field correlator is determined by that of the strong coupling constant.