Probing the photon emissivity of the quark-gluon plasma without an inverse problem in lattice QCD

Abstract

The thermal photon emissivity of the quark-gluon plasma is determined by the in-medium spectral function of the electromagnetic current at lightlike kinematics, σ(ω). In this work, we present the first lattice QCD results on moments of σ(ω)/ω, defined by the weight function 1/(ω2+(2πTn)2), n∈Z and computed without encountering an inverse problem. We employ two dynamical flavors of O(a)-improved Wilson fermions at a temperature T≈250 MeV and perform the continuum limit. We compare our results for the first two moments to those obtained dispersively by integrating over the spectral function computed at weak coupling by Arnold, Moore and Yaffe. Published by the American Physical Society 2024