On the energy deposited by a quark moving in an N=4 SYM plasma

Abstract

We evaluate the energy momentum tensor of a massive quark as it moves through an N=4 SYM quark gluon plasma at constant velocity. We find that in the near-quark region, where the dynamics is expected to be dominated by dissipative behavior, the energy density may be quantitatively characterized by a transient at velocities above the speed of sound of the plasma.