Drag Force on Heavy Quarks and Spatial String Tension

Abstract

Heavy quark transport coefficients in a strongly coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma can be evaluated using a gauge/string duality and lattice QCD. Via this duality, one can argue that for low momenta the drag coefficient for heavy quarks is proportional to the spatial string tension. Such a tension is well studied on the lattice that allows one to straightforwardly make non-perturbative estimates of the heavy quark diffusion coefficients near the critical point. The obtained results are consistent with those in the literature.

Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures; v2. figure added, presentation improved; v3. reference added, minor corrections