Asymptotic description of finite lifetime effects on the photon emission from a quark-gluon plasma

Abstract Direct photons play an important role as electromagnetic probes from the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) which occurs during ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. In this context, it is of particular interest how the finite lifetime of the QGP affects the resulting photon production. Earlier investigations on this question were accompanied by a divergent contribution from the vacuum polarization and by the remaining contributions not being integrable in the ultraviolet (UV) domain. In this work, we provide a different approach in which we do not consider the photon number density at finite times, but for free asymptotic states obtained by switching the electromagnetic interaction according to the Gell-Mann and Low theorem. This procedure eliminates a possible unphysical contribution from the vacuum polarization and, moreover, renders the photon number density UV integrable. It is emphasized that the consideration of free asymptotic states is, indeed, crucial to obtain such physically reasonable results.