Self-consistent hard-thermal-loop thermodynamics for the quark-gluon plasma

Self-consistent approximations allowing the calculation of the entropy and the baryon density of a quark-gluon plasma are presented. These approximations incorporate the essential physics of the hard thermal loops, involve only ultraviolet-finite quantities, and are free from overcounting ambiguities. While being nonperturbative in the strong coupling constant g, agreement with ordinary perturbation theory is achieved up to and including order g(3). It is shown how the pressure can be reconstructed from the entropy and the baryon density taking into account the scale anomaly. The results obtained are in good agreement with available lattice data down to temperatures of about twice the critical temperature. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.