The heavy quarks are the noble probes to explore the hot and dense medium
formed in the heavy-ion collision experiments. The energy of the heavy quarks
while passing through the medium gets modified, making this aspect an essential
subject for the researchers to understand the medium; hence, several authors
have widely studied it from various viewpoints. Here, our primary focus is on
the equilibrium phase, {\it i.e.,} the quark-gluon plasma phase of the created
medium to provide a comparative study of energy loss of heavy quarks precisely
through the medium polarization, elastic collisions, and radiation as in most
of the studies the medium polarization is missing which we found to provide a
substantial contribution, especially at low momentum. Hence, we presented the
formalism of the energy loss and drag effect for each case and then obtained
the nuclear modification factor to provide a comparative study of the three
processes.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure