GAP EQUATION IN SCALAR FIELD THEORY AT FINITE TEMPERATURE

We investigate the two-loop gap equation for the thermal mass of hot massless g2ϕ4 theory and find that the gap equation itself has a nonzero finite imaginary part. This implies that it is not possible to find the real thermal mass as a solution of the gap equation beyond g2 order in perturbation theory. We have solved the gap equation and obtained the real and imaginary parts of the thermal mass which are correct up to g4 order in perturbation theory.