Drag-induced radiative energy loss from semihard heavy quarks

Abstract

The case of gluon bremsstrahlung off a heavy quark in extended nuclear matter is revisited within the higher twist formalism. In particular, the in-medium modification of "semi-hard" heavy quarks is studied, where the momentum of the heavy quark is larger but comparable to the mass of the heavy quark ($p \gtrsim M$). In contrast to all prior calculations, where the gluon emission spectrum is entirely controlled by the transverse momentum diffusion parameter ($\hat q$), both for light and heavy quarks, in this work, we demonstrate that the gluon emission spectrum for a heavy quark (unlike that for flavors) is also sensitive to $\hat e$, which so far has been used to quantify the amount of light-cone drag experienced by a parton. This mass dependent effect, due to the non-light-like momentum of a semi-hard heavy-quark, leads to an additional energy loss term for heavy-quarks, while resulting in a negligible modification of light flavor (and high energy heavy flavor) loss. This result can be used to estimate the value of this sub-leading non-perturbative jet transport parameter ($\hat e$) from heavy flavor suppression in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions.