THE ELECTRIC SCREENING MASS IN SCALAR ELECTRODYNAMICS AT HIGH-TEMPERATURE

We study the screening of static electric fields in massless scalar el ectrodynamics at high temperature and zero chemical potential. Effecti ve field theory methods are used to separate the contributions from th e momentum scales T and eT to the electric screening mass. The effects of the distance scale 1/T are encoded in the parameters of an effecti ve three-dimensional field theory. The parameters of the effective Lag rangian can be written as a power series in e(2). The contribution to physical quantities from the scale 1/eT can be calculated from perturb ation theory in the effective theory and is an expansion in e starting at e(3). The electric screening mass squared is computed to order e(4 ).