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Probing strongly coupled anisotropic plasma

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Abstract

We calculate the static potential, the drag force and the jet quenching parameter in strongly coupled anisotropic \( \mathcal{N} = {4} \) super Yang-Mills plasma. We find that the jet quenching is in general enhanced in presence of anisotropy compared to the isotropic case and that its value depends strongly on the direction of the moving quark and the direction along which the momentum broadening occurs. The jet quenching is strongly enhanced for a quark moving along the anisotropic direction and momentum broadening happens along the transverse one. The parameter gets lower for a quark moving along the transverse direction and the momentum broadening considered along the anisotropic one. Finally, a weaker enhancement is observed when the quark moves in the transverse plane and the broadening occurs on the same plane. The drag force for quark motion parallel to the anisotropy is always enhanced. For motion in the transverse space the drag force is enhanced compared to the isotropic case only for quarks having velocity above a critical value. Below this critical value the force is decreased. Moreover, the drag force along the anisotropic direction is always stronger than the force in the transverse space. The diffusion time follows exactly the inverse relations of the drag forces. The static potential is decreased and stronger decrease observed for quark-antiquark pair aligned along the anisotropic direction than the transverse one. We finally comment on our results and elaborate on their similarities and differences with the weakly coupled plasmas.

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  1. National Institute for Theoretical Physics, School of Physics and Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits, 2050, South Africa

    Dimitrios Giataganas

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Giataganas, D. Probing strongly coupled anisotropic plasma. J. High Energ. Phys. 2012, 31 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2012)031

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