Light-cone Wilson loop in classical lattice gauge theory

Understand

The transverse broadening of an energetic jet passing through a non-Abelian plasma is believed to be described by the thermal expectation value of a light-cone Wilson loop.

• In this exploratory study, we measure the light-cone Wilson loop with classical lattice gauge theory simulations.
• We observe, as suggested by previous studies, that there are strong interactions already at short transverse distances, which may lead to more efficient jet quenching than in leading-order perturbation theory.
• We also verify that the asymptotics of the Wilson loop do not change qualitatively when crossing the light cone, which supports arguments in the literature that infrared contributions to jet quenching can be studied with dimensionally reduced simulations in the space-like domain.