Energy loss in a strongly coupled anisotropic plasma

Abstract

We study the energy loss of a rotating infinitely massive quark moving, at constant velocity, through an anisotropic strongly-coupled N=4 plasma from holography. It is shown that, similar to the isotropic plasma, the energy loss of the rotating quark is due to either the drag force or radiation with a continuous crossover from drag-dominated regime to the radiation dominated regime. We find that the anisotropy has a significant effect on the energy loss of the heavy quark, specially in the crossover regime. We argue that the energy loss due to radiation in anisotropic media is less than the isotropic case. Interestingly this is similar to analogous calculations for the energy loss in weakly coupled anisotropic plasma.