Chiral drag force

Understand

We provide a holographic evaluation of novel contributions to the drag force acting on a heavy quark moving through strongly interacting plasma.

• The new contributions are chiral in that they act in opposite directions in plasmas containing an excess of left- or right-handed quarks and in that they are proportional to the coefficient of the axial anomaly.
• These new contributions to the drag force act either parallel to or antiparallel to an external magnetic field or to the vorticity of the fluid plasma.
• In all these respects, these contributions to the drag force felt by a heavy quark are analogous to the chiral magnetic effect on light quarks.