# Determining the Diffusivity for Light Quarks from Experiment

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that charge balance functions in heavy-ion collisions can be used to experimentally constrain the diffusivity of light quarks, a key but poorly understood property.

## Contribution

It introduces a method to extract light quark diffusivity from charge balance functions, focusing on specific particle pairs in collision data.

## Key findings

- Balance functions are sensitive to light quark diffusivity.
- Experimental measurements can constrain quark diffusivity.
- Microscopic modeling links correlations to diffusivity.

## Abstract

Charge balance functions reflect the evolution of charged pair correlations throughout the stages of pair production, dynamical diffusion, and hadronization in heavy-ion collisions. Microscopic modeling of these correlations in the full collision volume shows that the balance functions are sensitive to the diffusivity of light quarks when studied as functions of relative azimuthal angle. By restricting our analysis to K+,K- and p,pbar pairs, we find that the diffusivity of light quarks, a fundamental property not currently well understood, can be constrained by experimental measurement.