Speaker
Description
Heavy quarks propagating through quark-gluon plasma provide a unique, experimentally accessible, opportunity to study the real-time dynamics of QCD in its strongly coupled regime. In the infinite heavy quark mass limit, the momentum change probability of a heavy quark in a thermal environment is characterized by the thermal expectation value of a Wilson loop featuring two long antiparallel timelike Wilson lines (along the direction defined by the heavy quark 4-velocity) with Wightman operator ordering. I will discuss the formulation of this Wilson loop, the KMS symmetry it enjoys, its calculation at weak coupling (in QCD and in $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM), and its calculation at strong coupling (in $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM via AdS/CFT). Time permitting, I will discuss these calculations in the context of heavy quark phenomenology in heavy ion collisions.
Based on 2501.06289, 2504.21139, 2604.21895, 2606.02693.