Heavy-quark energy loss and thermalization in a strongly coupled SYM plasma

Abstract

Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we compute the radiative energy loss of a slowly decelerating heavy quark with mass M moving through a supersymmetric Yang Mills (SYM) plasma at temperature T at large t'Hooft coupling \lambda. The calculation is carried out in terms of perturbation in \sqrt{\lambda}T/M, and the rate of the energy loss is computed up to second order. We explain the physical meaning of each correction and estimate the thermalization time of a heavy quark moving in a strongly-coupled plasma.