Meson correlation functions in a QCD plasma Original Research Article

The temporal pseudoscalar meson correlation function in a QCD plasma is investigated in a range of temperatures exceeding Tc and yet of experimental interest. Only the flavour-singlet channel is considered and the imaginary time formalism is employed for the finite temperature calculations. The behaviour of the meson spectral function and of the temporal correlator is first studied in the HTL approximation, where one replaces the free thermal quark propagators with the HTL resummed ones. This procedure satisfactory describes the soft fermionic modes, but its application to the propagation of hard quarks is not reliable. An improved version of the so-called NLA scheme, which allows a better treatment of the hard fermionic modes, is then proposed. The impact of the improved NLA on the pseudoscalar temporal correlator is investigated.