How to compute the thermal quarkonium spectral function from first principles? Original Research Article

In the limit of a high temperature T and a large quark-mass M, implying a small gauge coupling g, the heavy quark contribution to the spectral function of the electromagnetic current can be computed systematically in the weak-coupling expansion. We argue that the scale hierarchy relevant for addressing the disappearance (“melting”) of the resonance peak from the spectral function reads M≫T>g2M>gT≫g4M, and review how the heavy scales can be integrated out one-by-one, to construct a set of effective field theories describing the low-energy dynamics. The parametric behaviour of the melting temperature in the weak-coupling limit is specified.