  In this thesis a systematic comparison of supersymmetric plasma systems and
their nonsupersymmetric counterparts is presented. The work is motivated by the
AdS/CFT correspondence and the main aim is to check how much the plasma
governed by the N=4 super Yang-Mills theory resembles the quark-gluon plasma
studied experimentally in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The analysis is
done in a weak coupling regime where perturbative methods are applicable. Since
the Keldysh-Schwinger approach is used, not only equilibrium but also
nonequilibrium plasmas, which are assumed to be ultrarelativistic, are under
consideration. First, using the functional techniques we introduce
Faddeev-Popov ghosts into the Keldysh-Schwinger formalism of nonAbelian gauge
theories. Next the collective excitations of the N=1 SUSY QED plasma are
considered and compared to those of the usual QED system. The analysis is
repeated to confront with each other the plasmas governed by the N=4 super
Yang-Mills and QCD theories. Finally, transport properties of the systems are
also discussed. Since both collective excitations and transport characteristics
of supersymmetric and nonsupersymmetric plasmas are very similar to each other
we conclude that supersymmetric plasma systems are qualitatively the same as
their nonsupersymmetric partners in weak coupling regime. The quantitative
differences mostly reflect different numbers of degrees of freedom.
