Heavy-quark transport coefficients in a hot viscous quark-gluon plasma medium

TL;DR

This paper estimates heavy-quark transport coefficients in a viscous quark-gluon plasma using a realistic equation of state, revealing significant effects of viscosity and EoS on heavy-quark dynamics at RHIC and LHC energies.

Contribution

It introduces a quasi-particle model with a realistic QGP EoS to evaluate heavy-quark transport coefficients, including viscous effects, which was not extensively studied before.

Findings

Interactions suppress the temperature dependence of the drag coefficient.

Viscous corrections significantly increase the drag coefficient at lower temperatures.

Realistic EoS and viscosities substantially influence heavy-quark transport properties.

Abstract

The heavy-quark (HQ) transport coefficients have been estimated for a viscous quark-gluon plasma medium, utilizing a recently proposed quasi-particle description based on realistic QGP equation of state (EoS). Interactions entering through the equation of state significantly suppress the temperature dependence of the drag coefficient of QGP as compared to that of an ideal system of quarks and gluons. Inclusion of shear and bulk viscosities through the corrections to the thermal phase space factors of the bath particles alters the magnitude of the drag coefficient and the enhancement is significant at lower temperatures. The competition between the effects of realistic EoS and dissipative corrections through phase space factor the former eventually dictate how the drag coefficient would behave as a function of temperature, and how much quantitatively digress from the ideal case. The observations suggest significant impact of both the realistic equation of state, and the viscosities, on the HQs transport at RHIC and the LHC collision energies.