Energy loss in a strongly coupled anisotropic plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how anisotropy in a strongly-coupled plasma affects the energy loss of a rotating heavy quark, revealing significant anisotropic effects especially during the transition from drag to radiation regimes.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed holographic analysis of energy loss mechanisms for a rotating quark in an anisotropic plasma, highlighting the impact of anisotropy on energy dissipation.

Findings

Anisotropy significantly alters energy loss, especially during the crossover regime.

Energy loss due to radiation is reduced in anisotropic media compared to isotropic.

The results are consistent with analogous weakly coupled plasma calculations.

Abstract

We study the energy loss of a rotating infinitely massive quark moving, at constant velocity, through an anisotropic strongly-coupled N=4 plasma from holography. It is shown that, similar to the isotropic plasma, the energy loss of the rotating quark is due to either the drag force or radiation with a continuous crossover from drag-dominated regime to the radiation dominated regime. We find that the anisotropy has a significant effect on the energy loss of the heavy quark, specially in the crossover regime. We argue that the energy loss due to radiation in anisotropic media is less than the isotropic case. Interestingly this is similar to analogous calculations for the energy loss in weakly coupled anisotropic plasma.