Nonequilibrium approach to heavy-quark transport

Abstract

A nonequilibrium Green's function approach to heavy-quark transport is discussed within the framework of the Kadanoff-Baym equation. One- and two-loop self-energy diagrams with hard-thermal-loop resummed propagators are calculated in the real-time formalism. Under the quasiparticle approximation, the kinetic equation reduces to the Boltzmann equation that accounts for elastic scattering and medium-induced gluon emission from a single scattering. Numerical studies suggest that off-shell and memory effects in quark-gluon plasmas influence heavy-quark dynamics, particularly near the critical temperature.

Comments: 17 pages, 6 figures