Energy change of a heavy quark in a viscous quark–gluon plasma with fluctuations

Abstract

When a heavy quark travels through the quark–gluon plasma, the polarization and fluctuating chromoelectric fields will be produced simultaneously in the plasma. The drag force due to those fields exerting in return on the moving heavy quark will cause energy change to it. Based on the dielectric functions derived from the viscous chromohydrodynamics, we have studied the collisional energy change of a heavy quark traversing the viscous quark–gluon plasma including fluctuations of chromoelectric field. Numerical results indicate that the chromoelectric field fluctuations lead to an energy gain of the moving heavy quark. Shear viscosity suppresses the fluctuation-induced energy gain and the viscous suppression effect for the charm quark is much more remarkable than that for the bottom quark. While, the fluctuation energy gain is much smaller than the polarization energy loss in magnitude and the net energy change for the heavy quark is at loss.