The Energy of a Moving Quark-Antiquark Pair in an N=4 SYM Plasma

TL;DR

Using AdS/CFT, the paper calculates the energy of a moving quark-antiquark pair in a strongly-coupled plasma, revealing no drag force, a specific energy dependence at small separations, and a velocity-dependent screening length.

Contribution

It provides a novel analysis of the energy and screening behavior of a moving quark-antiquark pair in N=4 SYM plasma using holographic methods.

Findings

No drag force on the pair.

Energy scales as 1/L or gamma/L at small separations.

Screening length depends on velocity.

Abstract

We make use of the AdS/CFT correspondence to determine the energy of an external quark-antiquark pair that moves through strongly-coupled thermal N=4 super-Yang-Mills plasma, both in the rest frame of the plasma and in the rest frame of the pair. It is found that the pair feels no drag force, has an energy that reproduces the expected 1/L (or gamma/L) behavior at small quark-antiquark separations, and becomes unbound beyond a certain screening length whose velocity-dependence we determine. We discuss the relation between the high-velocity limit of our results and the lightlike Wilson loop proposed recently as a definition of the jet-quenching parameter.