Published April 30, 2010 | Version v1
Journal article

New Mechanism for Quark Energy Loss

  • 1. Physics Department, Theory Unit, CERN, CH-1211 Geneve 23 (Switzerland)
  • 2. Departament de Fisica Fonamental and Institut de Ciencies del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 647, E-08028 Barcelona (Spain)
  • 3. Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats (ICREA), Lluis Companys 23, E-08010, Barcelona (Spain)

Description

We show that a heavy quark moving sufficiently fast through a quark-gluon plasma may lose energy by Cherenkov-radiating mesons. We demonstrate that this takes place in all strongly coupled, large-Nc plasmas with a gravity dual. The energy loss is exactly calculable in these models despite being an O(1/Nc) effect. We discuss implications for heavy-ion collision experiments.

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review Letters
Journal Volume
104
Journal Issue
17
Journal Page Range
p. 172301-172301.4
ISSN
0031-9007
CODEN
PRLTAO

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2010 The American Physical Society