Collisional Energy Loss of Fast Charged Particles in Relativistic Plasmas

Abstract

Following an argument by Kirzhnits we rederive an exact expression for the energy loss of a fast charged particle in a relativistic plasma using the quantum field theoretical language. We compare this result to perturbative calculations of the collisional energy loss of an energetic electron or muon in an electron-positron plasma and of an energetic parton in the quark-gluon plasma.

Comments: 9 pages, LATEX, 2 PostScript figures