The momentum diffusion coefficient for heavy quarks is studied in a deconfined gluon plasma in the static approximation by investigating a correlation function of the color electric field using Monte Carlo techniques. The diffusion coefficient is extracted from the long-distance behavior of such a correlator. For temperatures $T_c<T\lesssim 2T_c$, our nonperturbative estimate of the diffusion coefficient is found to be very different from the leading-order perturbation theory and is in the right ballpark to explain the heavy quark flow seen by the PHENIX Collaboration at the RHIC experiment.

• Received 13 October 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.85.014510