Non-perturbative collisional energy loss of heavy quarks in quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

We suggest a new mechanism for the energy loss of fast heavy quarks in quark-gluon plasma. This mechanism is based on pion production caused by the anomalous chromomagnetic quark-gluon-pion interaction induced by strong topological fluctuations of the gluon fields represented by instantons. We found that this mechanism gives a considerable contribution to the collisional energy loss of a heavy quark in quark-gluon plasma, which shows a nontrivial role of nonperturbative phenomena in strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma.

Comments: REVTEX, 6 pages, 4 figures, revised manuscript