Parton energy loss in a classical strongly coupled QGP Original Research Article

We investigate the energy loss of heavy quarks in the gas, liquid and solid phase of a classical quark–gluon plasma (cQGP) using molecular dynamics simulations. The model consists of massive quarks and gluons interacting as a classical non-relativistic colored Coulomb gas. We show that the electric force–force decorrelates on a short time scale causing the energy loss to be mostly diffusive and Langevin-like in the cQGP. We find that the drag coefficient changes with the heavy quark mass, while the diffusion constant does not. The fractional collisional energy loss is much larger than the leading order estimates from a wQGP (weakly coupled QGP) because of the core repulsion. Following recent suggestions, we show how the cQGP results can be translated to the sQGP (strongly coupled QGP) results in the T=(1−3)Tc range.