Non-conformal Holography of Heavy Quark Quenching

TL;DR

This paper presents a bottom-up holographic model for QCD that links the trace anomaly peak to heavy quark energy loss in a strongly-coupled plasma, with parameters fitted to lattice results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel gravity model connecting QCD thermodynamics with heavy quark energy loss, constrained by lattice data.

Findings

Heavy quark energy loss is highly sensitive to medium properties.

The model reproduces key features of QCD at finite temperature.

Parameters fitted to lattice gauge theory results enhance model accuracy.

Abstract

We develop a holographic (bottom-up) gravity model for QCD to understand the connection between the peak in the trace anomaly and the magnitude of heavy quark energy loss in a strongly-coupled plasma. The potential of the scalar field on the gravity side is constructed to reproduce some properties of QCD at finite temperature and its parameters are constrained by fitting lattice gauge theory results. The energy loss of heavy quarks (as predicted by the holographic model) is found to be strongly sensitive to the medium properties.