Langevin dynamics and decoherence of heavy quarks at high temperatures

Abstract

A Langevin equation of heavy quarks in high-temperature quark-gluon plasma is derived. The dynamics of heavy quark color is coupled with the phase space dynamics and causes a macroscopic superposition state of heavy quark momentum. Decoherence of the superposition state allows one to use a classical description. The time scale of decoherence gives an appropriate discretization time scale $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}t\ensuremath{\sim}\sqrt{M/{C}_{\mathrm{F}}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ for the classical Langevin equation, where $M$ is heavy quark mass and $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ is heavy quark momentum diffusion constant.