Energy loss of heavy quarks in the presence of magnetic field

Abstract

We study the heavy quark energy loss in the presence of a background magnetic field. The analysis considers the high magnetic field generated by spectators from initial hard collisions that were incorporated using the medium-modified Debye mass, determined from quark condensates at finite temperature and magnetic field via recent lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD) calculations. We analyse the impact of medium polarization on the heavy quark propagation in a quark-gluon plasma formed in relativistic heavy-ion colliders like RHIC and LHC. For simplification, we considered the static medium with constant temperature and magnetic field values. Then, we explore the nuclear modification factor ($R_{AA}$) at different magnitudes of magnetic field strengths at fixed temperatures. The energy loss of heavy quarks significantly increases, leading to $R_{AA}$ suppression at higher magnetic field values.