Non-Markovian heavy-quark equilibration and equilibrium correlation function in a thermal medium
We compute the charm-quark current-current correlation function within the Langevin framework and extract the heavy-quark diffusion coefficient using the Green--Kubo formula. The formalism is further extended to evaluate the correlation function using a generalized Langevin equation that incorporates memory effects via an exponentially decaying memory kernel. We find that while memory effects qualitatively modify the transient structure of the current correlations, the value of the transport coefficient remains unchanged in the non-relativistic limit. In addition, we investigate heavy-quark thermalization in the presence of memory and compare the non-equilibrium solution of a generalized Fokker--Planck equation with the one obtained from the generalized Langevin equation in the non-relativistic limit. We also consider the relativistic version of the correlated noise case and observe that memory effects can give rise to a damped, oscillatory equilibration of the heavy quark in a non-Markovian bath.
Authors
- S R Das (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3679-2428)
- Monisha Nair
- Juan Torres-Rincon
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical review. D/Physical review. D.
- Published
- 2026-10-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/rg73-x5r9
- Primary Topic
- High-Energy Particle Collisions Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Arthritis National Research Foundation
- National Research Foundation
- Generalitat de Catalunya
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
- Agencia Estatal de Investigación
- Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz