Perturbative renormalization of the electric field correlator

Abstract: The momentum diffusion coefficient of a heavy quark in a hot QCD plasma can be extracted as a transport coefficient related to the correlator of two colour-electric fields dressing a Polyakov loop. We determine the perturbative renormalization factor for a particular lattice discretization of this correlator within Wilson's SU(3) gauge theory, finding a ~12% NLO correction for values of the bare coupling used in the current generation of simulations. The impact of this result on existing lattice determinations is commented upon, and a possibility for non-perturbative renormalization through the gradient flow is pointed out.