In a framework that makes close contact with modern effective field theories for non-relativistic bound states at zero temperature, we study the real-time evolution of a static quark-antiquark pair in a medium of gluons and light quarks at finite temperature. For temperatures ranging from values larger to smaller than the inverse distance of the quark and antiquark, 1/r, and at short distances, we derive the potential between the two static sources, and calculate their energy and thermal decay width. Two mechanisms contribute to the thermal decay width: the imaginary part of the gluon self energy induced by the Landau damping phenomenon, and the quark-antiquark color singlet to color octet thermal break up. Parametrically, the first mechanism dominates for temperatures such that the Debye mass is larger than the binding energy, while the latter, which we quantify here for the first time, dominates for temperatures such that the Debye mass is smaller than the binding energy. If the Debye mass is of the same order as 1/r, our results are in agreement with a recent calculation of the static Wilson loop at finite temperature. For temperatures smaller than 1/r, we find new contributions to the potential, both real and imaginary, which may be relevant to understand the onset of heavy quarkonium dissociation in a thermal medium.Comment: 42 pages, 16 figure

We compute the next-to-leading order O(g) correction to the thermal photon production rate in a QCD plasma. The NLO contributions can be expressed in terms of gauge invariant condensates on the light cone, which are amenable to novel sum rules and Euclidean techniques. We expect these technologies to be generalizable to other NLO calculations. For the phenomenologically interesting value of α s = 0.3, the NLO correction represents a 20% increase and has a functional form similar to the LO result.

We calculate the heavy quarkonium energy levels and decay widths in a quarkgluon plasma, whose temperature T and screening mass m D satisfy the hierarchy mα s ≫ T ≫ mα 2 s ≫ m D (m being the heavy-quark mass), at order mα 5 s . We first sequentially integrate out the scales m, mα s and T , and, next, we carry out the calculations in the resulting effective theory using techniques of integration by regions. A collinear region is identified, which contributes at this order. We also discuss the implications of our results concerning heavy quarkonium suppression in heavy ion collisions.

We estimate the thermal masses and damping rates of active (m < eV) and sterile (M ∼ GeV) neutrinos with thermal momenta k ∼ 3T at temperatures below the electroweak crossover (5 GeV < T < 160 GeV). These quantities fix the equilibration or "washout" rates of Standard Model lepton number densities. Sterile neutrinos interact via direct scatterings mediated by Yukawa couplings, and via their overlap with active neutrinos. Including all leadingorder reactions we find that the washout rate generally exceeds the Hubble rate for 5 GeV < T < 30 GeV. Therefore it is challenging to generate a large lepton asymmetry facilitating dark matter computations operating at T < 5 GeV, whereas the generation of a baryon asymmetry at T > 130 GeV remains an option. Our differential rates are tabulated in a form suitable for studies of specific scenarios with given neutrino Yukawa matrices. June 2016A number of previous computations of the right-handed neutrino production rate are worth