Relativistic spectral function of nucleons in hot nuclear matter

We present a simple calculation of the nucleon self-energy in nuclear matter at finite temperature in a relativistic framework, using the real-time thermal field theory. The imaginary parts of one-loop graphs are identified with discontinuities across the unitary and the Landau cuts. We find that in general both the cuts contribute significantly to the spectral function in the region of (virtual) nucleon mass usually considered, even though the unitary cut is ignored in the literature. Furthermore, our relativistic spectral function differs from the one in nonrelativistic approximation, used in some earlier calculations.