Electric and magnetic properties of hot gluons

Abstract

The dielectric constant ε and magnetic permeability μ for gluon plasma are calculated from the one-loop gauge-invariant effective action. The real parts are gauge-fixing independent and agree with earlier work. The imaginary part of ${\mathrm{\mu }}^{\mathrm{-}1}$ is zero in any covariant background-field gauge, while the imaginary part of ε is gauge-fixing dependent and negative definite. This result indicates that there is no consistent perturbative description of gluonic plasmons on scale ≥(${\mathrm{g}}^2$T${)}^{\mathrm{-}1}$.