Abstract
We calculate the collisional energy loss of a muon of high energy in a hot QED plasma beyond logarithmic accuracy, i.e., we determine the constant terms of order in . Considering first the -channel contribution to , we show that the terms are sensitive to the full kinematic region for the momentum exchange in elastic scattering, including large values . We thus redress a previous calculation by Braaten and Thoma, which assumed and could not find the correct constant (in the large limit). The relevance of “very hard” momentum transfers then requires, for consistency, that and -channel contributions from Compton scattering must be included, bringing a second modification to the Braaten-Thoma result. Most importantly, Compton scattering yields an additional large logarithm in . Our results might have implications in the QCD case of parton collisional energy loss in a quark gluon plasma.
- Received 30 October 2007
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.77.014015
©2008 American Physical Society