  We compare the use of the Coulomb gauge in finite temperature QED with a
recently proposed prescription for covariant gauges, in which only the
transverse photon degrees of freedom are thermalized. Using the Landau rule as
a guide, we clarify the relation between the retarded electron self-energy and
the elements of the self-energy matrix in the real-time formulation of . The
general results are illustrated by means of the one-loop expressions for the
electron self-energy in a QED plasma.
