Long time ago, photon production was proposed as a probe and a thermometer for Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). However, only recently has the complete α s order photon spectrum been obtained. In this paper we give a brief review of the problematic as well as discuss the O(α s ) result.
Why Photon production?Following the well known rhetoric, photons are weakly coupled to the strongly interacting quarks and gluons. Photons emitted in a QGP will immediately escape without further interactions in the plasma. This immediate "escape" will carry useful information on the nature of the supposedly formed plasma, at the emission stage. Hence the comparison between the calculated photon spectrum from a QGP and that from a hadron gas medium with the measured photon spectrum in heavy ion collision, after background subtraction, will constitute an evidence in favor of either state of matter. In an optimistic scenario, the plasma will live long enough for thermalization to occur. At a suitable high temperature (T ), which is not so realistic in present heavy ion collisions, the running strong coupling constant α s will be small. The above framework can be summarized as follows: we have a system in thermal equilibrium with an exact microscopic description in terms of quarks and gluons. In the small coupling constant regime, the calculation of the photon spectrum seems to be a straightforward application of perturbation theory. This is seemingly a simple situation compared to photon production in proton-proton collision where form-factors show up. Although photons are weakly coupled to the plasma this description is oversimplified, since the quark that emits the photon is affected by medium effects such as Debye screening; it also acquires a thermal mass which plays a central role in screening infrared divergences. Medium effects are well described by the Hard Thermal Loop (HTL) effective theory [ 1]. So, the HTL theory is the natural scheme for calculating the photon production rate in a thermalized QGP. For present (RHIC), and near future (LHC), heavy ion collision experiments a more realistic prediction should go beyond the small coupling constant regime. This will be briefly discussed at the end of this article.