Heavy quark diffusion coefficient in heavy-ion collisions via kinetic theory
Kirill Boguslavski, Aleksi Kurkela, T. Lappi, Florian Lindenbauer, Jarkko Peuron
Abstract
We compute the heavy quark momentum diffusion coefficient <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mi>κ</a:mi></a:math> using QCD kinetic theory for a system going through bottom-up isotropization in the initial stages of a heavy ion collision. We find that the values of <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><c:mi>κ</c:mi></c:math> are within 30% from a thermal system at the same energy density. When matching for other quantities we observe considerably larger deviations. We also observe that the diffusion coefficient in the transverse direction is larger at high occupation numbers, whereas for an underoccupied system the longitudinal diffusion coefficient dominates. The behavior of the diffusion coefficient can be understood on a qualitative level based on the Debye mass <e:math xmlns:e="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><e:mrow><e:msub><e:mrow><e:mi>m</e:mi></e:mrow><e:mrow><e:mi>D</e:mi></e:mrow></e:msub></e:mrow></e:math> and the effective temperature of soft modes <g:math xmlns:g="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><g:mrow><g:msub><g:mrow><g:mi>T</g:mi></g:mrow><g:mrow><g:mo>*</g:mo></g:mrow></g:msub></g:mrow></g:math>. Our findings for the kinetic evolution of <i:math xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><i:mi>κ</i:mi></i:math> in different directions can be used in phenomenological descriptions of heavy quark diffusion and quarkonium dynamics to include the impact of preequilibrium stages. Published by the American Physical Society 2024