Heavy-Quark Momentum Broadening in a Non-Abelian Plasma away from Thermal Equilibrium

We perform classical-statistical real-time lattice simulations to compute real-time spectral functions and momentum broadening of quarks in the presence of strongly populated non-Abelian gauge fields. Based on a novel methodology to extract the momentum broadening for relativistic quarks, we find that the momentum distribution of quarks exhibit interesting nonperturbative features as a function of time due to correlated momentum kicks it receives from the medium, eventually going over to a diffusive regime. We extract the momentum diffusion coefficient for a mass range describing charm and bottom quarks and find sizable discrepancies from the heavy-quark limit. Published by the American Physical Society 2024