Langevin dynamics and decoherence of heavy quarks at high temperatures

Abstract

A Langevin equation of heavy quarks in high-temperature quark-gluon plasma is derived. The dynamics of heavy quark color is coupled with the phase space dynamics and causes a macroscopic superposition state of heavy quark momentum. Decoherence of the superposition state allows one to use a classical description. The time scale of decoherence gives an appropriate discretization time scale $\Delta t\sim \sqrt{M/C_{\mathrm{F}}\gamma }$ for the classical Langevin equation, where $M$ is heavy quark mass and $\gamma$ is heavy quark momentum diffusion constant.

v3: 8 pages, 1 figure, published version

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