1/Nc expansion of the quark condensate at finite temperature

Previously the quark and meson properties in a many quark system at finite temperature have been studied within effective QCD approaches in the Hartree approximation. In the present paper we consider the influence of the mesonic correlations on the quark self-energy and on the quark propagator within a systematic 1/Nc expansion. Using a general separable ansatz for the nonlocal interaction, we derive a self-consistent equation for the 1/Nc correction to the quark propagator. For a separable model with cutoff form factor, we obtain a decrease of the condensate of the order of 20% at zero temperature. A lowering of the critical temperature for the onset of the chiral restoration transition due to the inclusion of mesonic correlations is obtained with results that seem to be closer to those from lattice calculations. copyright 1996 The American Physical Society