  The mechanism of the chiral symmetry breaking is investigated in the
strong-coupling Abelian gauge theories at finite temperature. The
Schwinger-Dyson equation in Landau gauge is employed in the real time formalism
and is solved numerically within the framework of the instantaneous exchange
approximation including the effect of the hard thermal loop for the photon
propagator. It is found that the chiral symmetry is broken below the critical
temperature T for sufficiently large coupling. The chiral phase transition is
found to be of the 2nd order and the phase diagram on the $T-\alpha$ plane is
obtained. It is investigated how the structure of the chiral phase transition
is affected by the hard thermal loops in the photon propagator.
