Heavy Quark Transport is Non-Gaussian Beyond Leading Log
Jean F. Du Plessis, Bruno Scheihing-Hitschfeld
TLDR
Heavy quark transport in weakly coupled plasmas is non-Gaussian, with asymmetric exponential tails crucial for equilibration, a robust feature across coupling regimes.
Key contributions
- Identifies non-Gaussian heavy quark transport with asymmetric exponential tails beyond leading log.
- Computes leading-order momentum transfer kernel for relativistic heavy quarks in weak non-Abelian plasmas.
- Matches perturbative momentum transfer on thermal scale to hard-thermal-loop-resummed soft physics.
- Demonstrates non-Gaussianity is a robust feature, present in both weak and strong coupling regimes.
Why it matters
This paper reveals that heavy quark transport is fundamentally non-Gaussian, a crucial insight for understanding equilibration dynamics in quark-gluon plasma. By showing this feature exists across weak and strong coupling, it provides a unifying perspective on plasma physics. This robust finding has significant implications for modeling real-world quark-gluon plasma.
Original Abstract
We find that heavy quark transport beyond leading logarithm at weak coupling is intrinsically non-Gaussian: the longitudinal momentum transfer distribution has asymmetric exponential tails that are crucial for equilibration dynamics. We show this by computing the leading-order momentum transfer kernel for relativistic heavy quarks in weakly coupled non-Abelian plasmas, matching perturbative momentum transfer on the thermal scale to hard-thermal-loop-resummed soft physics. This is the same structure previously found in strongly coupled holographic plasmas, showing that it is not peculiar to weak or strong coupling, conformality, or supersymmetry. We therefore expect that this is a robust feature that physical quark-gluon plasma should also exhibit.
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