Heavy-quark transport coefficients in a hot viscous quark–gluon plasma medium

Abstract

Heavy-quark (HQ) transport coefficients have been estimated for a viscous quark–gluon plasma (QGP) medium, utilizing a recently proposed quasi-particle description based on a realistic QGP equation of state (EoS). Interactions entering through the EoS significantly suppress the temperature dependence of the drag coefficient of QGP, compared to those of an ideal relativistic system of quarks and gluons. The inclusion of shear and bulk viscosities through the corrections to the thermal phase space factors of the bath particles alters the magnitude of the drag coefficient; the enhancement is significant at lower temperatures. In the competition between the effects of the EoS and dissipative corrections through phase space factors, the former eventually dictate how the drag coefficient would behave as a function of temperature and how much it quantitatively digresses from the ideal case. The observations suggest a significant impact of both the realistic EoS and the viscosities on the HQs transport at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and Large Hadron Collider collision energies.