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# STRONG AND WEAK LENSING CONSTRAINTS ON GALAXY MASS DISTRIBUTION

## 1 The Theory: – What Do We Expect –

Although, Astrophysics is generally a question of detecting photons and making sense of them using various physical theories, Gravitational Lensing (GL) is generally a question of understanding the light paths of these photons which then allow to probe the intervening mass distribution. Thus GL must be seen as a useful tool (in a similar way as stellar dynamics) to probe the mass distribution of galaxies - objects of interest in this Conference.

### 1.1 Useful Gravitational Lensing Equations

A lens operates a transformation from Source plane to Image plane that is merely a simple 2D-mapping that can be describe by 3 equations relating the Source and Image properties:

1. Position:

$$\stackrel{}{\theta _S}=\stackrel{}{\theta _I}\stackrel{}{}\phi (\stackrel{}{\theta _I})$$
(1)
this equation give the position of the source $`\stackrel{}{\theta }_S`$ for an image at position $`\stackrel{}{\theta _I}`$; $`\phi `$ is the lensing potential that relates to the projected Newtonian potential by: $`\phi =\frac{2}{c^2}\frac{D_{OS}}{D_{LS}}\varphi ^{2D}`$. Furthermore, as the mapping is purely geometrical, the surface brightness of the objects are conserved through the equation: $`S(\stackrel{}{\theta _I})=S(\stackrel{}{\theta _S})`$.
2. Shape:

$$\frac{d\stackrel{}{\theta _S}}{d\stackrel{}{\theta _I}}=A^1=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1_{xx}\phi (\stackrel{}{\theta _I})& _{xy}\phi (\stackrel{}{\theta _I})\\ _{yx}\phi (\stackrel{}{\theta _I})& 1_{yy}\phi (\stackrel{}{\theta _I})\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}1\kappa \gamma _1& \gamma _2\\ \gamma _2& 1\kappa +\gamma _1\end{array}\right)$$
(2)
This equation defines the inverse of the amplification matrix $`A^1`$ at the image position $`\stackrel{}{\theta _I}`$. The image magnification $`\mu `$ is defined as: $`\mu ^1=det(A^1)`$ and the reduced shear (distortion induced by the mass distribution) is $`\stackrel{}{g}=\frac{\stackrel{}{\gamma }}{1\kappa }`$ where $`2\kappa =\mathrm{\Sigma }/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{crit}`$, with $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{crit}=\frac{c^2}{4G}\frac{D_{OS}D_{OL}}{D_{LS}}`$ the critical density. We also define the absolute shear $`\overline{\gamma }=\frac{D_{OS}}{D_{LS}}\gamma `$ which is independent on the redshift of the lens and the source and only depends on the mass distribution.
3. Time:

$$t_a\frac{1}{2}(\stackrel{}{\theta }_S\stackrel{}{\theta }_I)^2\phi (\stackrel{}{\theta _I})$$
(3)
This equation defines the arrival time of an image at position $`\stackrel{}{\theta _I}`$. The difference between two images gives the time-delay. Originally it was foreseen to use the time-delay to constrain the Hubble constant $`H_0`$, but it does strongly depend on the exact mass profile and distribution. Therefore, assuming a reasonable value for $`H_0`$, the measure of the time-delay can put strong constraints on the mass distribution, in particular in constraining the total convergence of the lens.

We will concentrate here on the determination of the mass distribution, thus assuming that we have measured the source and lens redshifts as well as determined/fixed the cosmology.

### 1.2 Case of a Circular Mass Distribution

All 3 equations depend on the lensing potential $`\phi `$ either by its gradient (position), its second derivatives (shape/amplification) or its value (time-delay). For a circular mass distribution, it is easy to show that $`_r\phi =\frac{m(r)}{r}`$, and that all lensing equations can be written as functions of $`\frac{m(r)}{r}\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}(<r)`$. Note that constraints are absolute in the case of multiple images but are only relative in terms of shear (galaxy-galaxy lensing) as in this case $`\frac{m(r)}{r}`$ can be expressed as an integral for which the limits are not always well defined \[this is also true in cluster lensing and this effect is related to the mass sheet degeneracy\].

### 1.3 Galaxy Mass Distributions - parametric vs. non-parametric

Parametric approaches have been favored from the beginning of lensing, as it provides simple formulae and gives analytical expressions of most or all the necessary lensing quantities. First, circular models were used like the point mass model; the singular isothermal sphere (SIS); the isothermal sphere with a core, with a truncation; the NFW model (Navarro et al 1997); and recently more general cuspy models have been proposed (Holley-Bockelmann et al 2001). The diversity of circular models has increased to allow more freedom in the radial profile of the mass distribution, in particular following the recent developments of numerical simulations of Dark Matter halos. By changing the slope of the mass profile we can for example fix the image position but then allow a wider range of acceptable time-delay or flux-ratio between multiple images as these quantities will effectively depend on the radial profile.

Of course, circularity is not likely to be the property of galaxy mass distribution, hence the need of elliptical mass distribution. However only the simplest mass profiles have an analytical expression for the elliptical mass distribution. For the more complex ones (such as the NFW model or the cuspy models), either pseudo-elliptical models (Golse & Kneib 2001) or numerically integrated expressions have been proposed (Munoz et al 2001).

The interest of parametric expressions is their easy use, and their predictive power. Furthermore, they are usually physically motivated and thus generally dynamically stable.

The non-parametric methods have been developed in the strong lensing regime to allow more freedom in the expression of the mass distribution. In general, the mass distribution is represented as a pixelated array in the mass plane or alternatively in the potential plane; the former being generally chosen as it allows to use linear expressions (Saha & Williams 1997). Non-parametric 1D and 2D methods have been developed for cluster weak lensing, however only the 1D mass reconstruction from the weak shear profile is of interest for galaxy lensing. Although interesting, these approaches are poorly predictive and generally proposed dynamically non-stable solutions.

Both methods should be explored as their results can be complementary, however in the future we ought to develop multi-scale/multi-component modeling which will take the best of the two current competing methods.

## 2 Observations: – Where Do We Fight –

Better are the observations in terms of position, shape, time-delay, better will be the constraints on the galaxy mass distribution that can be derived. However, strong and weak lensing constraints usually do not overlap, in the sense that strong lensing focus on the 1 to 10 kpc region, and the weak lensing on the 10 to 100 kpc region.

### 2.1 Strong Lensing: Constraints and External Shear

Because the number densities of background galaxies/quasars is small compared to the physical size of a lensing galaxies, we currently know only a small number of strong lensing systems.

For a multiple quasar system, if $`N`$ is the number of multiply images observed, we thus have (as a maximum): $`2(N1)`$ constraints in position, $`N1`$ constraints in amplification, $`N1`$ constraints in time-delay. For a double system, it means a maximum of 4 constraints, but 12 for a quadruple system. Of course, external constraints are usually used, like the observed lensing galaxy center, its ellipticity and position angle (that is generally a maximum of 4). This is to compare to the description of the mass distribution of a galaxy which is represented at least by 6 or 7 parameters: $`x,y,\epsilon ,\theta ,\sigma _0,r_c,r_{cut},\alpha `$

One can see that for double quasar the number of constraints is of the order of the number of free parameters, and that generally quadruple system are over-constrained (assuming a one clump mass model).

Of course larger number of images can arise like the 6 image B1359+154 (Rusin et al 2001) or the 10 image radio-lens B1933+503 (Cohn et al 2000), but generally they also need more complex mass distribution to be properly understood. An interesting avenue, is to detect the host galaxy of multiple quasars, indeed, the larger the number of structures identified in the host galaxy the larger the number of constraints on the mass distribution. If the host is sufficiently extended, then it will form an Einstein ring as it has been recently observed and discussed by Kochanek et al (2001). However, lensing constraints are local and thus will only shade light on the mass distribution at the location of the images. Thus ideally, we would like to observe multiple images at different radius from the galaxy center, in order to probe accurately the mass profile.

The current situation has enable to show that rarely a perfect fit is obtained with only one mass clump centered on the main lensing galaxy (e.g. Keeton, Kochanek, Seljak 1996). The simplest way to improve the fit is to introduce what is called external shear: a mathematical tweak of 2 parameters (the intensity $`\gamma _E`$ and its orientation $`\theta _E`$). The only, but important drawback on the use of the external shear is that it is not physically motivated has it has no mass. Understanding the origin of the external shear is currently an important GL question.

There is four possible origins to the external shear: 1) the main galaxy itself (by allowing the radial mass profile to change for an elliptical mass distribution) \[as e.g. in HE2149-27, Burud et al 2001\]; 2) nearby galaxies \[as in most systems?\]; 3) nearby group of galaxies \[as e.g. in PG1115, in HST14176\]; 4) nearby cluster of galaxies \[as e.g. in RXJ0911, Kneib et al 2001\].

The external shear contribution increases with the size of the mass perturbating the system, and decreases with its distance to the lensing system. Clearly, nearby galaxies are the most likely origin, and clusters the less likely. However because most of strong lensing galaxies are ellipticals the presence of a nearby group or cluster is not surprising, as ellipticals are usually found in dense environments.

To gain more information on the line of sight mass contribution, deep, wide multi-color images, followed by a redshift survey of the nearby structure, or a deep X-ray observation, are needed to quantify precisely the different mass components and to explain the origin of external shear.

### 2.2 Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing: Scaling Laws and Recovery Methods

As massive clusters in their outskirts, foreground galaxies distort background galaxies following the weak lensing equation that reads (in the weak regime approximation): $`\stackrel{}{\epsilon }_I=\stackrel{}{\epsilon }_S+\stackrel{}{g}`$ where $`g=\frac{\gamma }{1\kappa }\gamma `$ is the reduced shear. By averaging over the (a priori) random orientation of the sources the mean ellipticity of the images equals the reduced shear: $`<\stackrel{}{\epsilon }_I>=\stackrel{}{g}`$, and the dispersion of the measurements is $`\sigma _g=\frac{\sigma _{\epsilon _S}}{\sqrt{N}}`$. As $`\sigma _{\epsilon _S}0.25`$, ideally, for a 4-sigma measure the number of galaxies needed scales as $`Ng^2`$. However due to the measurement errors (cirularisation and anisotropies of the PSF — see a number of contributions in this conference) the number of galaxies needed scales probably more as $`N23\times g^2`$. As we are probing regions with $`g`$ 0.01 to 0.0001 a very large amount of quality data is required.

However this simple calculations over simplify the problem, indeed galaxies have different sizes, luminosities, masses and are not at the same redshift. Using a simple approach, one can only constrain the mass of the average galaxy which is not exactly what we aim to learn. Therefore, it is important to use scaling laws and tune them try to understand better the mass distribution of galaxies in their diversity.

The first critical scaling is the distance. Ideally, one wants to know the redshifts of the lensing galaxies as they will allow to define their angular diameter distances, and estimate their luminosities from their broad band magnitudes. It is thus clear that any weak lensing survey with multicolor and spectroscopic informations (for the brighter galaxies) is of critical importance when we want to relate the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal to galaxy mass distribution (e.g. the LCRS galaxy-galaxy lensing analysis: Smith et al 2001, and the recent SDSS analysis: McKay et al 2001). Not having a spectroscopic redshift, one can alternatively used photometry redshifts or any redshift informations that can be derived from the broad-band photometry (e.g. the early work of Brainerd et al 1996).

The second scaling is to assume that the mass distribution can be represented by a universal mass profile which depends only on a very small number of parameters. The general approach first proposed by Brainerd et al. (1996) is to scale the velocity dispersion $`\sigma `$ and truncature radius $`r_{cut}`$ of an isothermal profile with the galaxy luminosity following some general prescription like the Faber-Jackson law: $`\sigma =\sigma _{}(L/L_{})^{1/4}`$, the Kormendy relation: $`r_{cut}=r_{cut^{}}(L/L_{})^{0.8}`$ \[implying $`(M/L)L^{0.3}`$\] or assuming $`(M/L)=cste`$ whatever the luminosity \[implying $`r_{cut}=r_{cut^{}}(L/L_{})^{0.5}`$\]. Of course, this is really the simplest one can assume, the mass distribution may depend on the effective radius of the galaxy and/or its morphological type, the exponent in the scaling relations may be different that the standard ones. Furthermore, the truncated isothermal sphere may not represent the correct universal mass profile, hence other mass profile such as cuspy models should be investigated.

Finally, galaxy mass distribution is likely not circular. Thus, one want to relate the ellipticity of the mass to the ellipticity of the light (by reason of symmetry they should have the same orientation). Either one can assume that mass and light have the same ellipticity or one can try to understand what is the scaling law relating the 2 ellipticities.

The simplest recovering technique is what we can call the direct averaging where we try to estimate the mass distribution directly from the PSF corrected measured ellipticities (e.g. Bridle et al in this conference proceeding). Basically this means we estimate the absolute shear for a galaxy pair (the foreground and background galaxies separated by a distance $`r`$) at a scaled distance $`r/r_s`$ ($`r_s`$ is estimated from the foreground galaxy properties, such has the half-light radius, or a luminosity scaled radius) by averaging background galaxy ellipticities:

$$\overline{\gamma }(r/r_s)=<\frac{D_{OS}}{D_{LS}}ϵ_I(r)>$$

where the ratio of the angular distances corrects from the redshift difference from one galaxy pair to another.

Although this direct technique is very simple and robust, it allows only simple scaling for the mass, and the non-trivial contribution of galaxy clustering is directly included in the results, giving more an estimated of the galaxy-mass correlation function than the exact mass distribution of an average galaxy. Furthermore, 1) the mass derived from the shear $`\gamma `$ suffers from the so-called mass sheet degeneracy hence making difficult to derive any absolute mass estimate; 2) the direct average signal is washed out by any large scale mass distribution and thus should not be applied directly in galaxy cluster fields (Natarajan & Kneib 1997).

The alternative to the direct approach, are inverse methods, such as the maximum likelihood methods presented in Schneider & Rix (1996) and Natarajan & Kneib (1997). In these methods, we consider each (background) galaxy $`i`$ lensed by the nearby (foreground) galaxies. Assuming some scaling laws (see above) one can predicts the expected induced distortion on each (background) galaxy and thus compute its intrinsic ellipticity $`\stackrel{}{ϵ}_{Si}`$. Then by maximizing the likelihood $`L=\mathrm{\Pi }p_S(\stackrel{}{ϵ}_{Si})`$, where $`p_S`$ is the unlensed galaxy ellipticity distribution, one will be able to derive the best model that fits the observed data.

This strategy, although complex, allows to 1) probe various scaling laws, 2) test different form for the mass distribution profile, 3) use elliptical mass distribution, 4) model higher density environments like groups or clusters; thus this is the one to select specially whit good quality data which is likely to be the case for current and future surveys.

### 2.3 Strong and Weak Lensing: Galaxy in Clusters and Mass Evolution

It has been realized (e.g. Kneib et al 1996) that is is compulsory to take into account the mass distribution of galaxies in clusters to accurately model the lensing distortion. In fact as shown by Natarajan & Kneib (1997) the presence of a large scale mass distribution boost the galaxy-galaxy signal making it easier to detect if one used an adequate method. This is opening prospects to try to understand how the mass distribution is (re)distributed from small scale to large scale as a function of time and local density. Such results will be of great interest and will be important to compare to numerical simulations. Such results are just coming along (Natarajan et al 2000) and are likely to be of great interest with the development of weak lensing surveys.

## 3 The Future: – How Will We Do –

To better understand the higher mass densities of galaxies, we will need to enlarge the number multiple image systems. This will come either by current facilities - for example searching for small separation multiple quasars in the new quasar surveys (SDSS, 2dF) or by future surveys (ACS/SNAP/NGST/radio). When we have increased the number of systems from the current $`30`$ to more than one thousand, we should be able to probe accurately the galaxy mass distribution vs. galaxy type, environment and redshift. We also need to better constrain the current multiple image systems, this is possible by probing more accurately the line-of-sight mass distribution (origin of the external shear, measure of the time-delay, accurate redshifts) and by applying strong+weak lensing techniques.

Galaxy-galaxy lensing is likely to become sort of an industry with the developments of high quality imaging and spectroscopic surveys and will allow to test the various scaling laws and possible universal mass distribution. When applied to cluster survey, galaxy-galaxy lensing will allow to test the stripping efficiency on galaxy scale in higher densities environment. A possible interesting avenue, will also to conduct quasar-galaxy lensing survey to probe the weight of QSOs and their hosts and compare this results to normal galaxy mass distribution.

In short, there are good prospects to learn more on galaxy mass distribution (baryonic and dark matter) in the near future!

## Acknowledgments

I thank Priya and the LOC for organizing this very useful conference. I acknowledge support from INSU-CNRS, and from EU through the research network LENSNET \[http://webast.ast.obs-mip.fr/lensnet\].

## References


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# The Entropy of the Quark-Gluon Plasma

## 1 Introduction

As we were reminded, the Bielefeld meetings which took place in 1980 and 1982 have played a decisive role in our field. It should be added that, since then, the Bielefeld group has played a leading role in the study of QCD thermodynamics with lattice calculations. There is one particular result of that time that I wish to recall here because it is central to the topic of my talk. This result is that of the lattice calculation of the energy density of SU(2) pure gauge theory . It is reproduced in Fig. 1 where one sees clearly the phase transition and the approach to the ideal gas limit at high temperature confirming expectations based on asymptotic freedom.

Modern results for the SU(3) equation of state  are displayed in Fig. 2. The talk will focus on the slow approach to the free gas limit of the thermodynamical functions at high $`T`$. The question that I wish to address is whether one can understand the deviation from the ideal gas behaviour with weak coupling calculations. Beyond this question is, as we shall see, another one related to the relevance of the notion of quasiparticles in the description of the quark-gluon plasma.

The motivation for considering the quark-gluon plasma as a weakly coupled system is of course asymptotic freedom, which leads us to expect that the effective coupling $`g`$ to be used in thermodynamical calculations should be small if the temperature $`T`$ is high enough:

$`\alpha _s(\mu ){\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{ln}(\mu /\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD})}},`$ (1)
with typically $`\mu \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\pi T`$. But we know that, even in cases where the coupling is small, strict perturbation theory cannot be used. Technically, infrared divergences occur in high order calculations, and various resummations are needed to get meaningful results.

Some of the difficulties of perturbation theory are already visible on the lowest orders which, for SU(3) gluons, read:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{P}{P_0}}=1{\displaystyle \frac{15}{4}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }}\right)+30\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }}\right)^{3/2},`$ (2)
with $`P_0`$ the ideal gas pressure:

$`P_0=8{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2T^4}{45}}.`$ (3)
The large coefficient of the $`g^3`$ term makes its contribution to the pressure comparable to that of the order $`g^2`$ when $`g>0.8`$, or $`\alpha _s>0.05`$; larger coupling makes the pressure larger than that of the ideal gas. Now it is worth emphasizing that the term of order $`g^3`$ emerges from an infinite resummation (strict perturbation theory at finite order would lead to a polynomial in $`g^2`$); it is the leading term of the resummed expression when $`g`$ is small. We shall later argue that the underlying strategy (that of performing an infinite resummation which is then re-expanded in powers of $`g`$) may not be used to extrapolate to large coupling. Physically the need for resummation arises from the existence of collective excitations in the system, whose properties are not well captured by perturbation theory.

A lot of efforts have been devoted in the recent years to push perturbative calculations of the pressure to the highest calculable order, namely order $`g^5`$ . The contributions of order $`g^4`$ and $`g^5`$ do not resolve the difficulties met at order $`g^3`$: the values of the pressure obtained by adding successively these high order contributions oscillate wildly, and reveal a strong dependence on the renormalization scale. Attempts have been made to construct smooth extrapolations based on the first terms of the series, using Pade approximants  or Borel summation techniques . The resulting expressions are indeed smooth functions of the coupling, better behaved than polynomial approximations truncated at order $`g^5`$ or lower, with a weak dependence on the renormalization scale. However these techniques, which can be powerful, offer little physical insight.

A more appealing physical picture is provided by quasiparticle models in which one assumes that the dominant effect of the interactions can be incorporated in the spectral properties of suitably defined quasiparticles. It is useful to review briefly the simplest version of such models, limiting ourselves here to bosonic quasiparticles . One assumes that the system is composed of non interacting massive quasiparticles with energies $`E_k`$:

$`E_k^2=k^2+m^2(T)`$ (4)
with the mass $`m`$ some function of the temperature. The entropy density is that of the ideal gas:

$`s={\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}\left[(1+N_k)\mathrm{log}(1+N_k)N_k\mathrm{log}N_k\right]},`$
where

$`N_k={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{e}^{E_k/T}1}}.`$ (6)
The pressure $`P`$ and the energy density $`ϵ`$ are then given by the corresponding ideal gas expressions, to within a function $`B(T)`$ adjusted so as to satisfy thermodynamical identities. That is, one sets:

$`P=T{\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}\mathrm{log}\left(1\mathrm{e}^{E_k/T}\right)}B(T)`$ (7)
$`ϵ={\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}N_kE_k}+B(T).`$ (8)
Such a parametrization obviously fulfills the identity $`ϵ+P=Ts`$. The function $`B(T)`$ is then determined by requiring that

$`s={\displaystyle \frac{dP}{dT}}.`$ (9)
Such a model has been shown to provide a quite good basis for a fit to lattice results . Recent extensions of the model can be found in Ref. .

Finding a microscopic justification for this quasiparticle picture is the main motivation of the work that I shall present, summarizing results obtained in collaboration with E. Iancu and A. Rebhan . Our analysis is based on the entropy, for which the simple formulae above already suggest why it is simpler than the other thermodynamical functions: in both the pressure and the energy density there are interaction contributions, which cancel out in the entropy, leaving an expression in which all interaction effects are summarized in the properties of quasiparticles (in the simple model, the temperature dependent mass $`m(T)`$). We shall see later under which conditions this simple picture is valid.

At this stage, it is useful to have a more general characterization of the effects of weak interactions in a quark-gluon plasma. Let me then go through a short digression about the basic scales and degrees of freedom of such a system when the coupling is small .

## 2 Scales and degrees of freedom. Hard thermal loops

In the absence of interactions, the quark-gluon plasma is a gas of massless particles with energy $`E_k=k`$. Small interactions have little effects on most particles which have momentum $`kT`$, but they strongly modify the propagation of low momentum modes. Since the coupling to gauge fields occurs typically through covariant derivatives, $`D_x=_x+igA(x)`$, the effect of interactions on particle motion depends indeed on the momentum of the excitation and the magnitude of the gauge field. A measure of the strength of the gauge fields is obtained from the magnitude of their thermal fluctuations, that is $`\overline{A}\sqrt{A^2(t,𝐱)}`$. In equilibrium $`A^2(t,𝐱)`$ is independent of $`t`$ and $`𝐱`$ and given, in the non interacting case, by:

$`A^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}^3k}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{N_k}{E_k}}.`$ (10)
Here we shall use this formula also in the interacting case, assuming that the effects of the interactions can be accounted for simply by a change of $`E_k`$ (a more complete calculation is presented in Ref. ).

For the plasma particles $`E_k=kT`$ and $`A^2_TT^2`$. The associated electric (or magnetic) field fluctuations $`(A)^2_TT^4`$ are a dominant contribution to the plasma energy density. As already mentioned, these short wavelength, or hard, gauge field fluctuations produce a small perturbation on the motion of a plasma particle with momentum $`kT`$, since $`g\overline{A}_TgTk`$. However, this is not so for an excitation at the momentum scale $`kgT`$, since then the two terms in the covariant derivative $`_x`$ and $`g\overline{A}_T`$ become comparable. That is, an excitation with momentum $`gT`$ is non perturbatively affected by the hard thermal fluctuations. And indeed, the scale $`gT`$ is that at which collective phenomena develop. The emergence of the Debye screening mass $`m_DgT`$ is one of the simplest examples of such phenomena.

The fluctuations at the soft scale $`gTT`$ can be described by classical fields. In fact the associated occupation numbers $`N_k`$ are large, and accordingly one can replace $`N_k`$ by $`T/E_k1/g`$ in eq. (10). Introducing an upper cut-off $`gT`$ in the momentum integral, one then gets:

$`A^2_{gT}{\displaystyle ^{gT}}\mathrm{d}^3k{\displaystyle \frac{T}{k^2}}gT^2.`$ (11)
Thus $`\overline{A}_{gT}\sqrt{g}T`$ so that $`g\overline{A}_{gT}g^{3/2}T`$ is still of higher order than the kinetic term $`_xgT`$. In that sense the soft modes with $`kgT`$ are still perturbative, i.e. their self-interactions can be ignored in a first approximation. Note however that they generate contributions to physical observables which are not analytic in $`g^2`$, as shown by the example of the order $`g^3`$ contribution to the pressure (or as in eq.(11) above).

At the lower momentum scale $`kg^2T`$, unscreened magnetic fluctuations play a dominant role. The contributions of such ultrasoft  fluctuations is

$`A^2_{g^2T}T{\displaystyle _0^{g^2T}}\mathrm{d}^3k{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k^2}}g^2T^2,`$ (12)
so that $`g\overline{A}_{g^2T}g^2T`$ is now of the same order as the ultrasoft derivative $`_xg^2T`$: the fluctuations are no longer perturbative. This is the origin of the breakdown of perturbation theory in high temperature QCD. A more detailed analysis reveals that the fluctuations at scale $`g^2T`$ come from the zero Matsubara frequency and correspond therefore to those of a three dimensional theory of static fields.

Having identified these various scales, we note now that the thermodynamical functions at high temperature are dominated by hard degrees of freedom. The quasiparticle picture that we shall develop takes into account consistently the contributions of the hard degrees of freedom together with those of the long wavelength collective excitations. We shall comment later on the techniques based on dimensional reduction which allows a treatment of the ultrasoft contributions.

There exists a well developed effective theory for the soft collective excitations that we briefly outline now. These soft excitations can be described in terms of average fields which obey classical equations of motion. In QED these equations are Maxwell equations:

$`_\mu F^{\mu \nu }=j_{ind}^\nu +j_{ext}^\nu `$ (13)
with a source term composed of an external perturbation $`j_{ext}^\nu `$, and an extra contribution $`j_{ind}^\nu `$ referred to as the induced current. The induced current, which summarizes the effects of the hard degrees of freedom, can be obtained using linear response theory. It is of the form:

$`j_\mu ^{ind}={\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^4y\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }^R(xy)A^\nu (y)},`$ (14)
where $`A^\nu (y)`$ is the total gauge field (including the induced potential) and the (retarded) response function $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }^R(xy)`$ is also referred to as the polarization tensor. In leading order in weak coupling, this polarization tensor is given by the one-loop approximation, and can be written as $`\mathrm{\Pi }(\omega ,p)=g^2T^2f(\omega /p,p/T)`$ with $`f`$ a dimensionless function. Furthermore, the relevant kinematics is such that the incoming momentum is soft while the loop momentum is hard. Thus, in leading order in $`p/Tg`$, $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ is of the form $`g^2T^2f(\omega /p)`$. This particular contribution of the one-loop polarization tensor is an example of what has been called a “hard thermal loop” .

In a non Abelian theory, linear response is not sufficient: constraints due to gauge symmetry force us to take into account specific non linear effects. The relevant generalization of the Yang-Mills equation reads  :

$`D_\nu F^{\nu \mu }=\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }^{ab}A_b^\nu +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu \rho }^{abc}A_b^\nu A_c^\rho +\mathrm{}`$ (15)
where the induced current in the right hand side is non-linear: when expanded in powers of $`A_a^\mu `$, it generates an infinite series of hard thermal loops (self-energy and vertex corrections).

In the next section, we shall consider various reorganizations of the perturbative expansion inspired by the previous analysis and which try to accommodate the non perturbative features associated with the various scales.

## 3 Reorganizing perturbative expansion

As we have seen, one of the main effects of the thermal fluctuations is to generate a mass for the soft modes. This is not peculiar to gauge theories, but occurs also in the simpler case of a scalar field. In this case, the mass generation can be taken into account non perturbatively by a very simple reorganization of the perturbative expansion, leading to the so-called “screened perturbation theory” . One writes:

$``$ $`=`$ $`_0{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m^2\varphi ^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m^2\varphi ^2+_{int}`$ (16)
$`=`$ $`_0^{}+_{int}^{},`$
with $`_0^{}=_0(1/2)m^2\varphi ^2`$. The mass $`mgT`$ which appears here is for instance that obtained in leading order from the hard thermal loop. A perturbative expansion in terms of screened propagators (that is keeping the screening mass as a parameter, i.e. not as a perturbative correction to be expanded out) has been shown to be quite stable with good convergence properties. However, $`m`$ makes the propagators explicitly temperature dependent, and the ultraviolet divergences which occur in high order calculations become temperature dependent. Although we know that temperature dependent infinities should eventually cancel out, the systematics of such cancellations is not immediately transparent.

In the case of gauge theory, the effect of the interactions is more complicated than just generating a mass. But we know how to determine the dominant corrections to the self-energies. When the momenta are soft, these are given by the hard thermal loops discussed above. By adding these corrections to the tree level Lagrangian, and subtracting them from the interaction part, one generates the so-called hard thermal loop perturbation theory :

$`=_0+_{HTL}_{HTL}+_{int}=_0^{}+_{int}^{}.`$ (17)
The resulting perturbative expansion is made complicated however by the non local nature of the hard thermal loop action, and by the necessity of introducing temperature dependent counter terms. Also, in such a scheme, one is led to use the hard thermal loop approximation in kinematical regimes where it is not justified.

Another approach that I wish to mention at this stage is that based on dimensional reduction. This approach puts emphasis on the non perturbative, very long wavelength fluctuations. It has been shown in Refs.  how, in principle, an effective theory could be constructed to deal with this particular problem by marrying analytical techniques (to determine the coefficients of the effective theory) and numerical ones (to solve the non perturbative 3-dimensional effective theory). The resulting effective theory is a 3-dimensional theory of static fields, with Lagrangian:

$`_{eff}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(F_{ij}^a)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(D_iA_0^a)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_D^2(A_0^a)^2+\lambda (A_0^a)^4+\delta ,`$ (18)
with $`D_i=_iig\sqrt{T}A_i`$. This strategy has been applied recently to the calculation of the free energy of the quark-gluon plasma a high temperature . This technique of dimensional reduction puts a special weight on the static sector (it singles out the contributions of the zero Matsubara frequency), and a major effort is devoted to the calculation of the coefficients of the effective Lagrangian (which contain the dominant contribution to the thermodynamical functions).

In contrast, the approach that we have developed keep the full spectral information that one has about the plasma excitations. In a sense, it is close to the approach based on hard thermal loop perturbation theory. It differs in that we focus on the simplest of the thermodynamical function, namely the entropy, for which indeed interesting cancellations occur which allow us to bypass some of the difficulties of hard thermal loop perturbation theory.

## 4 Propagator renormalisation. Skeleton expansion

As already stated, we want to incorporate full spectral information about quasiparticles in thermodynamical calculations, and we are therefore led to carry out a propagator renormalisation. Although in gauge theory vertex renormalisation should be carried along with propagator renormalisation, we shall see here that special kinematical conditions allow us to develop useful approximations without having to do so.

The formalism that we shall rely on was developed long ago in the context of the non relativistic many-body problem. It is based on an expression for the pressure as a functional of full propagators, first written out by Luttinger and Ward . Systematic developments using either functional Legendre transforms or diagrammatic formalisms were presented later by De Dominicis and Martin . In implementing these methods to field theory one meets extra difficulties related to ultraviolet divergences. I now briefly outline the general method, writing explicitly only formulae appropriate for a scalar field (similar ones hold for QCD).

The free energy $``$ can be written as the following functional of the full propagator $`D`$:

$`[D]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}D^1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{\Pi }D+\mathrm{\Phi }[D],`$ (19)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the sum of all the two-particle irreducible (skeletons) diagrams. The self-energy $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ is related to the propagator by Dyson’s equation

$`D^1=D_0^1+\mathrm{\Pi },`$ (20)
and $`D_0`$ is the bare propagator. A remarkable feature of the functional (19) is its stationarity property, i.e., $`\delta [D]/\delta D=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}`$ when

$`\mathrm{\Pi }[D]=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \mathrm{\Phi }}{\delta D}}.`$ (21)
Together Eqs. (20) and (21) form a self-consistent set of equations which determine the full propagator. A major observation by Baym is that self-consistent approximations can be defined for any selection of skeleton diagrams in $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$; furthermore such “$`\mathrm{\Phi }`$-derivable” approximations have the property to respect the (global) symmetries of the hamiltonian .

The stationarity property of the free energy entails important simplifications in the calculation of the entropy. Indeed we have

$`𝒮={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}T}}={\displaystyle \frac{}{T}}|_D`$ (22)
where the last step uses the fact that the temperature dependence of the propagator can be ignored. Explicitly one gets:

$`𝒮={\displaystyle \frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{N(\omega )}{T}\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{log}D^1(\omega ,k)}+{\displaystyle \frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{N(\omega )}{T}\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Pi }(\omega ,k)\mathrm{Re}D(\omega ,k)}+𝒮^{}`$ (23)
where $`N(\omega )=1/(\mathrm{e}^{\beta \omega }1)`$, and

$$𝒮^{}\frac{(T\mathrm{\Phi })}{T}|_D+\frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{N(\omega )}{T}\mathrm{Re}\mathrm{\Pi }\mathrm{Im}D.$$

A further simplification occurs when one restricts the choice of skeletons to low order ones . Thus, for the two-loop skeletons in QCD, $`𝒮^{}=0.`$

## 5 The 2-loop entropy

At two loop in the skeleton expansion, the entropy takes then the simple form :

$`S={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}^4p}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{N}{T}\left\{\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{ln}D^1\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Pi }\mathrm{Re}D\right\}}`$ (24)
The simplifications discussed above have led to important cancellations leaving for the entropy an expression which is effectively a one-loop expression, thus emphasizing the direct relation between the entropy and the quasiparticle spectrum. Residual interactions start contributing at order 3-loop. This expression is also manifestly ultraviolet-finite.

Albeit simple, the 2-loop expression for the entropy is nevertheless difficult to use as it stands. Recall that the propagator and self-energy in this equation are solution of a self-consistent equation which is in general difficult to renormalize and to solve. Besides, in the case of gauge theories, the scheme does not fully respect gauge symmetry. We have therefore looked for additional approximations which exploits the simplicity of the scheme (the one-loop feature of the entropy formula) and at the same time allows for practical calculations. The main idea is to find gauge invariant approximations for the self-energy by exploiting kinematical approximations such as those which lead in particular to the hard thermal loops. The entropy is then calculated exactly with no further approximation. One constraint that we impose on our approximate $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ is that, once inserted in the formula (24), the resulting value of $`S`$ is perturbatively correct up to order $`g^3`$ (which is the maximum perturbative accuracy that one can achieve with 2-loop skeletons).

In the regime where the loop momenta are soft, we can use as an approximation for $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ the corresponding hard thermal loop (HTL), that is

$$\omega ,pgT\mathrm{\Pi }_{soft}\mathrm{\Pi }_{HTL}$$

For hard momenta on the other hand, the hard thermal loop is no longer valid: corrections to hard particle dispersion relations due to their coupling with soft modes need to be taken into account. This can be estimated using usual HTL perturbation theory. A simplification occurs however because we need such corrections only near the light cone:

$$\omega ,pT\mathrm{\Pi }_{hard}(\omega ^2p^2)$$

In fact we shall find convenient to define two successive approximations. In the first one, called the HTL approximation, we use $`\mathrm{\Pi }=\mathrm{\Pi }_{HTL}`$ at all momenta. This is a fine approximation for soft momenta, but it is also a decent approximation at hard momenta because the self-energy is needed only in the vicinity of the light cone where the hard thermal loop approximation coincides with the full one-loop result. We call $`𝒮_{HTL}`$ the resulting expression for the entropy. This expression fully accounts for the perturbative contributions of order $`g^2`$ but for only $`1/4`$ of that of order $`g^3`$. In the next-to-leading approximation one uses $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{soft}=\mathrm{\Pi }_{HTL}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{hard}=\mathrm{\Pi }_{HTL}+\delta \mathrm{\Pi }`$, where $`\delta \mathrm{\Pi }`$ contains the coupling to the soft modes (I should emphasize at this point that the construction of our next-to-leading approximation involves several subtle steps which I am skipping here but which are detailed by A. Rebhan in his contribution ). We call $`𝒮_{NLA}`$ the corresponding entropy; it takes fully into account all perturbative contributions of order $`g^2`$ and $`g^3`$.

As an illustration of the quality of the results which we can obtain, I present in Fig. 3 the entropy of pure SU(3) gauge theory normalized to the ideal gas entropy. The agreement at large $`T`$ ($`T>2.5T_c`$) is quite good. Note also that in going from one level of approximation to the next (i.e. from $`𝒮_{HTL}`$ to $`𝒮_{NLA}`$), the changes are moderate, in contrast to what happens in ordinary perturbation theory. This reflects the stability of the present scheme. It also points to the fact that the contribution of the soft collective modes is indeed small: the fact that they give a seemingly large contribution at order $`g^3`$ in perturbation theory is just an artifact of the truncation of a resummed expression at finite order.

## 6 CONCLUSIONS

Our results confirm that for temperatures larger than about 3$`T_c`$, the thermodynamical functions of the quark-gluon plasma, in particular its entropy, can indeed be interpreted as those of weakly interacting quasiparticles. The dominant effect of the interactions is to modify the spectrum of these quasiparticles. As the coupling grows the quasiparticle properties are non perturbatively renormalized but their mutual interactions remain weak.

Thermodynamic functions are dominated by hard degrees of freedom. While long range correlations may survive in the quark-gluon plasma at very large temperature, the present picture suggests that such correlations do not contribute much to the thermodynamics. We find explicitly that the soft contributions are indeed small. We argued in particular that the contribution of collective modes is artificially amplified when the coupling is not too small by truncating this contribution at order $`g^3`$.

The approach that we have developed relies on a hierarchy of scales that emerges when the coupling is small. It is an assumption that the structure identified at weak coupling survives when the coupling grows, e.g. as we lower the temperature. The fact that we find approximations where such an extrapolation works supports the validity of this assumption. But of course a complete check of the method can only be done by comparing with “exact” results, such as those provided by lattice techniques. Much can be learned also from detailed comparisons with the other approaches discussed earlier, namely hard thermal loop perturbation theory or dimensional reduction. There is finally much to do also within the present theory itself, to push for instance non perturbative renormalization techniques (interesting progress in this direction has been reported recently ; see also ).

Further tests involve the calculations of different observables. An example, advocated by Gavai  at this workshop, is that of quark susceptibilities. This is a calculation that we have recently taken up, with interesting results . The calculation of quark susceptibilities represents a small incursion into the physics of finite chemical potentials which is of course readily available in our approach .

## Acknowledgements

The work presented here has been carried out in a most enjoyable collaboration with E. Iancu and A. Rebhan. I would also like to thank Frithjof Karsch and Helmut Satz, for their invitation to this very stimulating meeting.