Drag Force in a Charged N=4 SYM Plasma

TL;DR

This paper uses the AdS/CFT correspondence to calculate how a charged N=4 SYM plasma affects the drag force on a moving quark, revealing increased drag with complex charge dependence.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed calculation of drag force in a charged plasma using holography, highlighting non-monotonic charge effects.

Findings

Drag force is larger in charged plasma than in neutral plasma.

Dependence of drag force on charge is non-monotonic.

Results enhance understanding of quark dynamics in strongly coupled plasmas.

Abstract

Following recent developments, we employ the AdS/CFT correspondence to determine the drag force exerted on an external quark that moves through an N=4 super-Yang-Mills plasma with a non-zero R-charge density (or, equivalently, a non-zero chemical potential). We find that the drag force is larger than in the case where the plasma is neutral, but the dependence on the charge is non-monotonic.