Abstract
Motivated by indications that heavy (charm and bottom) quarks interact strongly at temperatures generated in heavy ion collision experiments, we suggest a non- perturbative definition of a heavy quark chemical equilibration rate as a transport coefficient. Within leading-order perturbation theory (corresponding to 3-loop level), the definition is argued to reduce to an expression obtained from the Boltzmann equation. Around T ~ 400 MeV, an order-of-magnitude estimate for charm yields a rate \(\Gamma_{\text{chem}}^{ - 1} \gtrsim {6}0{{\text{fm}} \left/ {\text{c}} \right.}\) which remains too slow to play a practical role in current experiments. However, the rate increases rapidly with T and, due to non-linear effects, also if the initial state contains an overabundance of heavy quarks.
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ArXiv ePrint: 1205.4987
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Bödeker, D., Laine, M. Heavy quark chemical equilibration rate as a transport coefficient. J. High Energ. Phys. 2012, 130 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2012)130
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2012)130