Heavy Quark Transport is Non-Gaussian Beyond Leading Log

We find that heavy quark transport beyond leading logarithm at weak coupling is intrinsically non-Gaussian: the longitudinal momentum transfer distribution has asymmetric exponential tails that are crucial for equilibration dynamics. We show this by computing the leading-order momentum transfer kernel for relativistic heavy quarks in weakly coupled non-Abelian plasmas, matching perturbative momentum transfer on the thermal scale to hard-thermal-loop-resummed soft physics. This is the same struct