Chern-Simons theory and the quark-gluon plasma.

The generating functional for hard thermal loops in Quantum Chromodynamics is important in setting up a resummed thermal perturbation theory, so that all terms of a given order in the coupling constant can be consistently taken into account. It is also the functional which leads to a gauge invariant description of Debye screening and plasma waves in the quark-gluon plasma. We have recently shown that this functional is closely related to the eikonal for a Chern-Simons gauge theory. In this paper, this relationship is explored and explained in more detail along with some generalizations. This research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy.