Drag force at finite 't Hooft coupling from AdS/CFT

TL;DR

This paper investigates how finite 't Hooft coupling corrections affect the drag force on heavy quarks in N=4 SYM plasma using AdS/CFT, revealing significant increases especially for bottom quarks.

Contribution

It provides the first quantitative analysis of finite coupling effects on drag force in AdS/CFT, including corrections from Gauss-Bonnet gravity.

Findings

Drag force increases by about 50% for bottom quarks.

Drag force increases by about 5% for charm quarks.

Finite coupling corrections are significant and modify previous infinite coupling results.

Abstract

We find that the drag force for a heavy quark moving through N=4 SU(N_c) supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma is generally enhanced by the leading correction due to finite 't Hooft coupling. For a bottom quark, the drag force increases by about 50%, whereas for a charm quark it increases by about 5%. We also discuss the drag force for the case of Gauss-Bonnet gravity.