English

Heavy Quark Diffusion in Strongly Coupled $\N=4$ Yang Mills

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2008-11-26 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We express the heavy quark diffusion coefficient as the temporal variation of a Wilson line along the Schwinger-Keldysh contour. This generalizes the classical formula for diffusion as a force-force correlator to a non-abelian theory. We use this formula to compute the diffusion coefficient in strongly coupled N=4\N=4 Yang-Mills by studying the fluctuations of a string in AdS5×S5AdS_5\times S_5. The string solution spans the full Kruskal plane and gives access to contour correlations. The diffusion coefficient is D=2/λπTD=2/\sqrt{\lambda} \pi T and is therefore parametrically smaller than momentum diffusion, η/(e+p)=1/4πT\eta/(e+p)=1/4\pi T. The quark mass must be much greater than TλT\sqrt{\lambda} in order to treat the quark as a heavy quasi-particle. The result is discussed in the context of the RHIC experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0605199,
  title  = {Heavy Quark Diffusion in Strongly Coupled $\N=4$ Yang Mills},
  author = {Jorge Casalderrey-Solana and Derek Teaney},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0605199},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

17 pages + 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T14:08:42.584Z