Classical scattering matrix for hard and soft Bose-excitations in a non-Abelian plasma within the Hamiltonian formalism

TL;DR

This paper develops a classical scattering matrix framework for hard and soft Bose excitations in a non-Abelian plasma, enabling calculation of energy loss of fast color-charged particles during scattering events.

Contribution

It introduces a Hamiltonian formalism-based classical scattering matrix for quark-gluon plasma interactions, connecting quantum field methods with classical energy loss calculations.

Findings

Derived a general formula for energy loss of a fast color-charged particle.

Calculated the first nontrivial contribution to the classical scattering matrix.

Provided order-of-magnitude estimates of energy loss and compared with known results.

Abstract

Within the framework of the Zakharov-Schulman approach, in close analogy with the methods of quantum field theory, the classical scattering matrix for the simplest process of interaction between hard and soft excitations in a quark-gluon plasma (QGP), is determined. The classical $\mathcal{S}$-matrix is defined in the form of the most general integro-power series expansion in the asymptotic values as $t\rightarrow-\infty$ of normal bosonic variables $c^{-\,a}_{\hspace{0.02cm}{\bf k}}(t)$ and $(c^{-\,a}_{\hspace{0.02cm}{\bf k}}(t))^{\ast}$, describing the soft gluon excitations of the system, and a color charge $\mathcal{Q}^{-\hspace{0.03cm}a}(t)$ of a hard particle. The first nontrivial contribution to this matrix is calculated. The quantum commutator of quantum field operators is replaced by the so-called Lie-Poisson bracket depending on the classical asymptotic variables. The developed approach is used to derive a general formula for energy loss of a fast color-charged particle during its scattering off soft bosonic excitations of QGP in the framework of the classical Hamiltonian formalism. For this purpose, the notion of an effective current of the scattering process under consideration is introduced and its relation to the classical $\mathcal{S}$-matrix is determined. With the help of the known form of the classical scattering matrix, the desired effective current is recovered, which in turn allowed us to determine the formula for energy loss of the hard color particle. The rough estimates of energy loss at the order-of-magnitude level is provided and their comparison with the well-known results on the radiation and collision losses is performed.