Heavy quark radiative energy loss in QCD matter

Abstract

Heavy quark medium induced radiative energy loss is derived to all orders in opacity, ( L/ λ g ) n . The analytic expression generalizes the GLV opacity expansion for massless quanta to heavy quarks with mass M in a QCD plasma with a gluon dispersion characterized by an asymptotic plasmon mass, m g=gT/ 2 . Remarkably, we find that the general result is obtained by simply shifting all frequencies in the GLV series by ( m g 2+ x 2 M 2)/(2 xE). Numerical evaluation of the first order in opacity energy loss shows that both charm and bottom energy losses are much closer to the incoherent radiation limit than light partons in nuclear collisions at both RHIC and LHC energies. However, the radiation lengths of heavy quarks remain large compared to nuclear dimensions and hence high p T heavy quark production is volume rather than surface dominated.