Non-perturbative heavy quark diffusion coefficients in arbitrarily magnetized quark-gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper calculates heavy quark diffusion coefficients in a magnetized quark-gluon plasma, revealing anisotropic behavior influenced by magnetic fields and emphasizing the importance of non-perturbative effects at low temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative approach to compute anisotropic heavy quark diffusion coefficients in arbitrarily magnetized QCD media, incorporating effects via the in-medium HQ potential.

Findings

Diffusion coefficients become anisotropic in magnetic fields.

Non-perturbative effects dominate at low temperatures.

Results improve modeling of heavy quark flow in heavy-ion collisions.

Abstract

Heavy quark (HQ) momentum ($\kappa$) and spatial diffusion ($D_s$) coefficients are computed in a non-perturbative thermal QCD medium in the presence of a background magnetic field of arbitrary strength. Both perturbative and non-perturbative effects are incorporated via the in-medium HQ potential, obtained from the resummed gluon propagator. We find that the momentum diffusion coefficients become anisotropic even in the static heavy quark limit, with the magnetic field direction defining the axis of anisotropy. This anisotropy originates from restrictions on longitudinal momentum diffusion in the gluon spectral function, and naturally leads to two spatial diffusion coefficients ($D_s^L$, $D_s^T$). Non-perturbative effects are found to be dominant at low temperatures. These results provide a more consistent input for Langevin based calculations of the heavy quark directed flow at RHIC and LHC energies.