Collisional Energy Loss of Fast Charged Particles in Relativistic Plasmas

Abstract

Following an argument by Kirzhnits we rederive an exact expression for the energy loss of a fast charged particle in a relativistic plasma using the quantum field theoretical language. We compare this result to perturbative calculations of the collisional energy loss of an energetic electron or muon in an electron-positron plasma and of an energetic parton in the quark-gluon plasma.

9 pages, LATEX, 2 PostScript figures

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