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Energy loss of a heavy quark moving through N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma

C. P. Herzog, A. Karch, P. Kovtun, C. Kozcaz, L. G. Yaffe

Abstract

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to determine the rate of energy loss of a heavy quark moving through N=4 SU(N_c) supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma at large 't Hooft coupling. Using the dual description of the quark as a classical string ending on a D7-brane, we use a complementary combination of analytic and numerical techniques to determine the friction coefficient as a function of quark mass. Provided strongly coupled N=4 Yang-Mills plasma is a good model for hot, strongly coupled QCD, our results may be relevant for charm and bottom physics at RHIC.

Energy loss of a heavy quark moving through N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma

Abstract

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to determine the rate of energy loss of a heavy quark moving through N=4 SU(N_c) supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma at large 't Hooft coupling. Using the dual description of the quark as a classical string ending on a D7-brane, we use a complementary combination of analytic and numerical techniques to determine the friction coefficient as a function of quark mass. Provided strongly coupled N=4 Yang-Mills plasma is a good model for hot, strongly coupled QCD, our results may be relevant for charm and bottom physics at RHIC.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 20 sections, 123 equations.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction and Summary
  2. Heavy ion collisions
  3. $\mathcal{N}\,{=}\,4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory
  4. A toy model, and the plan of attack
  5. Summary of results
  6. Open string dynamics in the black brane background
  7. Adding a black hole
  8. String equations of motion
  9. Single quark solutions
  10. Static strings
  11. Moving, straight strings
  12. Moving, curved strings
  13. Quasinormal modes
  14. Quark-antiquark solutions
  15. Forced motion
  16. ...and 5 more sections