Non-perturbative collisional energy loss of heavy quarks in quark-gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper introduces a nonperturbative mechanism involving pion production due to topological gluon fluctuations, significantly contributing to the collisional energy loss of heavy quarks in quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It proposes a novel nonperturbative mechanism for heavy quark energy loss based on instanton-induced quark-gluon-pion interactions.

Findings

The mechanism contributes significantly to heavy quark energy loss.

Nonperturbative phenomena play a crucial role in quark-gluon plasma dynamics.

Abstract

We suggest a new mechanism for the energy loss of fast heavy quarks in quark-gluon plasma. This mechanism is based on pion production caused by the anomalous chromomagnetic quark-gluon-pion interaction induced by strong topological fluctuations of the gluon fields represented by instantons. We found that this mechanism gives a considerable contribution to the collisional energy loss of a heavy quark in quark-gluon plasma, which shows a nontrivial role of nonperturbative phenomena in strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma.