Effect of magnetic screening mass on the diffusion of heavy quarks

Abstract

The drag and diffusion coefficients of heavy quarks propagating through quark–gluon plasma (QGP) have been estimated by shielding the infra-red divergences using electric and magnetic screening masses. The electric-type screening in perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD) has been widely studied and used in evaluating the diffusion coefficient of heavy quarks (HQs). The impact of magnetic screening on diffusion coefficients of HQs is not studied before to the best of our knowledge. We explore the effect of magnetic screening mass on the drag and diffusion coefficients of HQs and found it to be non-negligible. Therefore, the effect of magnetic screening should be taken into consideration to characterize hot and dense matter formed in the collisions of nuclei at ultra-relativistic energies. We estimate the suppression of heavy flavored mesons in heavy ion collisions compared to proton+proton collisions at high transverse momenta and found that the suppression is less with the inclusion of magnetic screening. The value of the magnetic screening mass is not known exactly because of its nonperturbative nature. Moreover, it may not be possible to single out the effect of magnetic mass because of the uncertainties in other parameters involved in the diffusion process of HQs. Still it is important to include the effects of magnetic screening because of its physical origin in QCD.