Following recent formulation of second order relativistic viscous hydrodynamics for conformal fluids, we compute finite coupling corrections to the relaxation time of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma. The result is expected to be universal for any strongly coupled conformal gauge theory plasma in four dimensions.
The ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density in a strongly coupled CFT plasma can be computed using the AdS/CFT correspondence either from equilibrium correlation functions or from the Janik-Peschanski dual of the boost invariant plasma expansion. We point out that the previously found disagreement for eta/s at finite t' Hooft coupling is resolved once the incoming-wave boundary condition for metric fluctuations at the horizon of the dual geometry is properly imposed.
We present evidence for the universality of the shear viscosity of conformal gauge theory plasmas beyond infinite coupling. We comment of subtleties of computing the shear viscosity in effective models of gauge/gravity correspondence rather than in string theory.
We compute finite coupling correction to a nonlinear second order hydrodynamic coefficient in the boost invariant expansion of the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma. The result is universal for a large class of strongly coupled four dimensional conformal gauge theories.
In this paper, we study suppression of light quark in strongly coupled non-conformal plasmas using the AdS/CFT correspondence. The well-known falling string profile in the bulk is considered as light quark moving through the plasma. The maximum distance which string with energy E can travel before falling through the horizon is interpreted as thermalization distance of light quark in the hot-strongly coupled plasma. Our numerical results show that the thermalization distance of light quark increases by increasing deviation from conformal invariance. The relation between this distance and the e…
Instanton effects may have implications for hadronization of quark-gluon plasma as it cools. Here we study dispersion relations of mesons in a strongly coupled plasma with an instanton background present. It will be shown that at higher energies the instanton effect diminishes and some comments on the limiting velocity of mesons in the plasma. the profile function of mesons on the gravity side is considered also because of its relevance to energy loss of quark in plasma.
We give a pedagogical presentation of heavy and light probe quarks in a thermal plasma using the AdS/CFT correspondence. Three cases are considered: external heavy and light quarks undergoing Brownian motion in the plasma, and an external heavy quark moving through the plasma with a constant velocity. For the first two cases we compute the mean-squared transverse displacement of the string's boundary endpoint. At early times the behaviour is ballistic, while the late time dynamics are diffusive. We extract the diffusion coefficient for both heavy and light quarks in an arbitrary number of dime…
We exploit the AdS/CFT correspondence to investigate thermalization in an N=2 strongly coupled gauge theory including massless fundamental matter (quark). More precisely, we consider the response of a zero temperature state of the gauge theory under variation of an external electric field leading to a time-dependent current. The holographic dual of the above set-up is given by introducing a time-dependent electric field on the probe D7-brane embedded in an AdS_5 X S^5 background. In the dual gravity theory, due to a time-dependent electric field an apparent horizon forms on the brane which, ac…
We compute the strong coupling limit of the shear viscosity for the N=4 super-Yang-Mill theory with a chemical potential. We use the five-dimensional Reissner-Nordstrom-anti-deSitter black hole, so the chemical potential is the one for the R-charges U(1)_R^3. We compute the quasinormal frequencies of the gravitational and electromagnetic vector perturbations in the background numerically. This enables one to explicitly locate the diffusion pole for the shear viscosity. The ratio of the shear viscosity eta to the entropy density s is eta/s=1/(4pi) within numerical errors, which is the same resu…
We investigate drag force in a thermal plasma of N=4 super Yang-Mills theory via both fundamental and Dirichlet strings under the influence of non-zero NSNS $B$-field background. In the description of AdS/CFT correspondence the endpoint of these strings correspondes to an external monopole or quark moving with a constant electromagnetic field. We demonstrate how the configuration of string tail as well as the drag force obtains corrections in this background.
This is a comment to hep-th/0703243. The paper determined the relaxation time tau_pi of the shear viscous stress for the N=4 SYM from AdS/CFT correspondence. The purpose of this comment is to point out that the value of tau_pi is 3 times larger than their result if one takes into account an additional term in the hydrodynamic equation.
With the dielectric function computed from AdS/CFT correspondence, we studied the wake potential induced by a fast moving charge in strong coupling plasma, and compared it with the weak coupling wake potential for different particle velocities as $v=0.55c$ and $v=0.99c$. The most prominent difference between strong and weak wake potential is that when $v=0.99c$ the remarkable oscillation due to Cerenkov-like radiation and Mach cone in weak coupling disappears in strong coupling, which implies that the plasmon mode with phase velocity lower than the speed of light dose not exist in strong coupl…
Using the Janik-Peschanski dual to a Bjorken flow, a Langevin equation is derived for a heavy quark in an expanding N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma. Such a plasma is characterized by a proper-time dependence of the temperature and corresponds to a system out of equilibrium. The analysis first focuses on a quark at rest in the plasma comoving frame. The case of a quark moving across a longitudinally expanding plasma is then considered. The two-point functions for the random noise acting on such heavy quark probes are computed.
In this talk we first discuss the motivation for using the AdS/CFT correspondence as a tool for the understanding of real-time dynamics of quark-gluon plasma. After describing the effective dual degrees of freedom for a strongly coupled gauge theory system, we review the subsequent theoretical `layers' in the physics of quark-gluon plasma: a uniform plasma at fixed temperature, linearized fluctuations, nonlinear hydrodynamic behaviour and finally some aspects of addressing non-equilibrium physics. The discussion is brief and aimed at nonspecialists.
We study viscous hydrodynamics of hot conformal field theory plasma with multiple/non-Abelian symmetries in the framework of AdS/CFT correspondence, using a recently proposed method of directly solving bulk gravity in derivative expansion of local plasma parameters. Our motivation is to better describe the real QCD plasma produced at RHIC, incorporating its U(1)^Nf flavor symmetry as well as SU(2)_I non-Abelian iso-spin symmetry. As concrete examples, we choose to study the STU model for multiple U(1)^3 symmetries, which is a sub-sector of 5D N=4 gauged SUGRA dual to N=4 Super Yang-Mills theor…
We analyze the AdS/CFT dual geometry of an expanding boost-invariant plasma. We show that the requirement of nonsingularity of the dual geometry for leading and subasymptotic times predicts, without any further assumptions about gauge theory dynamics, hydrodynamic expansion of the plasma with viscosity coefficient exactly matching the one obtained earlier in the static case by Policastro, Son and Starinets.
In these pedagogical lectures, we present the techniques of the AdS/CFT correspondence which can be applied to the study of real time dynamics of a strongly coupled plasma system. These methods are based on solving gravitational Einstein's equations on the string/gravity side of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We illustrate these techniques with applications to the boost-invariant expansion of a plasma system. We emphasize the common underlying AdS/CFT description both in the large proper time regime where hydrodynamic dynamics dominates, and in the small proper time regime where the dynamics is f…
We study momentum relaxation due to dilute, weak impurities in a strongly coupled CFT, a truncation of the M2 brane theory. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we compute the relaxation time scale as a function of the background magnetic field B and charge density ρ. The theory admits two different types of impurities. We find that for magnetic impurities, momentum relaxation due to the impurity is suppressed by a background B or ρ. For electric impurities, due to an underlying instability in the theory towards an ordered phase, the inverse relaxation time scale increases dramatically near \sqrt…
We study causal hydrodynamics (Israel-Stewart theory) of gauge theory plasmas from the AdS/CFT duality. Causal hydrodynamics requires new transport coefficients (relaxation times) and we compute them for a number of supersymmetric gauge theories including the N=4 SYM. However, the relaxation times obtained from the "shear mode" do not agree with the ones from the "sound mode," which implies that the Israel-Stewart theory is not a sufficient framework to describe the gauge theory plasmas.
We study effective relaxation time of viscous hydrodynamics of strongly coupled non-conformal gauge theory plasma using gauge theory/string theory correspondence. We compute leading corrections to the conformal plasma relaxation time from the relevant deformations due to dim-2 and dim-3 operators. We discuss in details the relaxation time tau_eff of N=2^* plasma. For a certain choice of masses this theory undergoes a phase transition with divergent specific heat c_V ~ |1-T_c/T|^(-1/2). Although the bulk viscosity remains finite all the way to the critical temperature, we find that tau_eff dive…
We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to study the DC conductivity of massive $\mathcal{N} = 2$ hypermultiplet fields in an $\mathcal{N} = 4\, SU(N_c)$ super-Yang-Mills theory plasma in the large $N_c$ and finite 't Hooft coupling. We also discuss general curvature-squared and Gauss-Bonnet corrections on the DC conductivity.
We consider an expanding boost-invariant plasma at strong coupling using the AdS/CFT correspondence for N=4 SYM. We determine the relaxation time in second order viscous hydrodynamics and find that it is around thirty times shorter than weak coupling expectations. We find that the nonsingularity of the dual geometry in the string frame necessitates turning on the dilaton which leads to a nonvanishing expectation value for tr F^2 behaving like tau^(-10/3).
In this paper we apply the AdS/CFT correspondence to study a strongly coupled plasma far from equilibrium with a strong emphasis on the shear behavior. The plasma serves as a model for an electrically charged quark-gluon plasma. On the gravitational side, we use an ingoing Vaidya black brane spacetime. The highest rate of mass infall is confined to a short time interval.
We consider the diffusion of a non-relativistic heavy quark of fixed mass M, in a one-dimensionally expanding and strongly coupled plasma using the AdS/CFT duality. The Green's function constructed around a static string embedded in a background with a moving horizon, is identified with the noise correlation function in a Langevin approach. The (electric) noise decorrelation is of order 1/T(τ) while the velocity de-correlation is of order MD(τ)/T(τ). For MD>1, the diffusion regime is segregated and the energy loss is Langevin-like. The time dependent diffusion constant D(τ) asymptotes its adia…
We consider possible conformal field theory (CFT) descriptions of the various inertial ranges that exist in $2d$ duality invariant Magnetohydrodynamics. Such models arise as effective theories of dyonic plasmas in 3 dimensions in which all fields are independent of the third coordinate. We find new constraints on the allowed CFT's compared to those that may describe turbulence in $2d$ plasmas of electric charges only. The predictions from CFT concerning equipartition of energy amongst the electric and magnetic fields are discussed, and quantities exhibiting universal scaling are derived.
We construct new gravity backgrounds holographic dual to neutral plasma with U(1) global symmetry in the presence of constant electric field, considering its full back-reactions to the metric. As the electric field and the induced current cause a net energy in-flow to the system, the plasma is continually heated up and the corresponding gravity solution has an expanding horizon. After proposing a consistent late-time expansion scheme, we present analytic solutions in the scheme up to next-leading order, and our solutions are new time-dependent solutions of 5D asymptotic AdS Einstein-Maxwell(-C…
We present an exact solution for a black hole localized near an infrared wall in four-dimensional anti-deSitter space. By computing the holographic stress tensor we show that the CFT dual of the black hole is a 2+1-dimensional ball (i.e., a disk) of plasma at finite temperature, surrounded by vacuum. This confirms some earlier conjectures about plasma balls in AdS/CFT. We also estimate the value of the surface tension for the ball. The solution displays a number of peculiarities, most notably a non-trivial curvature of the boundary geometry, as well as other properties associated to the vanish…
We give a pedagogical review of recent progress towards understanding the response of a strongly coupled plasma at finite temperature to a hard probe. The plasma is that of the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and the hard probe is a virtual photon, or, more precisely, an R-current. Via the gauge/gravity duality, the problem of the current interacting with the plasma is mapped onto the gravitational interaction between a Maxwell field and a black hole embedded in the AdS_5 x S^5 geometry. The physical interpretation of the AdS/CFT results can be then reconstructed with the help of the ultr…
We use top-down gauge theory/string theory correspondence to compute relaxation rates in strongly coupled nonconformal gauge theory plasma. We compare models with difference mechanisms of breaking the scale invariance: "hard breaking" (by relevant operators) and "soft breaking" (by marginal operators). We find that the thermalization time of the transverse traceless fluctuations of the stress-energy tensor is rather insensitive to the mechanisms of breaking the scale invariance over a large range of the scale-breaking parameter $δ=\frac 13-c_s^2$. We comment on the relevance of the results to …
Asymptotic Fock spaces lead to IR divergences in S-matrices. The issue can be traced back to the assumption of asymptotic decoupling, and its relaxation leads to Faddeev-Kulish states and an IR-finite S-matrix. In this paper we initiate the exploration of these states in the context of the flat limit of AdS/CFT. We construct asymptotic states as flat limits of fields that interact with the electro-magnetic field in AdS, and provide a reconstruction in terms of the dual CFT operators.
The stress-energy tensor of a quark moving through a strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma is evaluated using gauge/string duality. The accuracy with which the resulting wake, in position space, is reproduced by hydrodynamics is examined. Remarkable agreement is found between hydrodynamics and the complete result down to distances less than 2/T away from the quark. In performing the gravitational analysis, we use a relatively simple formulation of the bulk to boundary problem in which the linearized Einstein field equations are fully decoupled. Our analysis easily generalizes t…
We study flavour susceptibilities in the ${\cal N}=4$ SU(N) super Yang-Mills plasma coupled to two quark flavours at strong coupling and large $N$ by means of its gravity dual. The off-diagonal susceptibility is 1/N-suppressed and we compute it as a one-loop effect on the gravity side. Contrary to naive extrapolation from perturbative results, it attains a finite value in the infinite-coupling limit. Moreover, its parametric form is independent of whether or not meson bound states exist in the plasma. We conclude that caution must be exercised when drawing conclusions about the QCD plasma from…
We find that the drag force for a heavy quark moving through N=4 SU(N_c) supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma is generally enhanced by the leading correction due to finite 't Hooft coupling. For a bottom quark, the drag force increases by about 50%, whereas for a charm quark it increases by about 5%. We also discuss the drag force for the case of Gauss-Bonnet gravity.
We explore use of the harmonic Einstein equations to numerically find stationary black holes where the problem is posed on an ingoing slice that extends into the interior of the black hole. Requiring no boundary conditions at the horizon beyond smoothness of the metric, this method may be applied for horizons that are not Killing. As a non-trivial illustration we find black holes which, via AdS-CFT, describe a time-independent CFT plasma flowing through a static spacetime which asymptotes to Minkowski in the flow's past and future, with a varying spatial geometry in-between. These are the firs…
In this talk I review some selected applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence to the study of nonequillibrium dynamics of strongly coupled plasma. I briefly describe the AdS/CFT methods and five recent studies dealing with various features of plasma evolution, in particular the transition to hydrodynamics, thermalization, very high order hydrodynamics, the dynamics of shock wave collisions and preequilibrium radial flow.
We consider a simple extension to the previously found gravity solution corresponding to a boost invariant Bjorken plasma, by allowing components that are asymmetric under parity flipping of the spacetime rapidity. Besides the question whether this may have a realization in collisions of different species of projectiles, such as lead-gold collision, our new time dependent gravity background can serve as a test ground for the recently proposed second order conformal viscous hydrodynamics. We find that non-trivial parity-asymmetric effects start to appear at second order in late time expansion, …
We construct black hole solutions of type IIB supergravity that are holographically dual to anisotropic plasmas arising from deformations of an infinite class of four-dimensional CFTs. The CFTs are dual to $AdS_5\times X_5$, where $X_5$ is an Einstein manifold, and the deformations involve the type IIB axion and dilaton, with non-trivial periodic dependence on one of the spatial directions of the CFT. At low temperatures the solutions approach smooth domain wall solutions with the same $AdS_5\times X_5$ solution appearing in the far IR. For sufficiently large deformations an intermediate scali…
We compute the momentum broadening of a heavy fundamental charge propagating through a $\mathcal{N}=4$ Yang Mills plasma at large t' Hooft coupling. We do this by expressing the medium modification of the probe's density matrix in terms of a Wilson loop averaged over the plasma. We then use the AdS/CFT correspondence to evaluate this loop, by identifying the dual semi-classical string solution. The calculation introduces the type ``1'' and type ``2'' fields of the thermal field theory and associates the corresponding sources with the two boundaries of the AdS space containing a black hole. The…
Experiments on high-energy heavy-ion collisions reveal the formation and some intriguing properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a new phase of matter predicted by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the quantum field theory of strong interactions. The phenomenological success of relativistic hydrodynamic simulations with remarkably weak shear viscosity, modeling QGP as an almost perfect fluid, are in favor of the occurrence of a strongly-coupled QGP expanding and cooling during the reaction. A derivation of these features in QCD at strong coupling is still lacking and represents a very intricat…
We use the gauge-string duality to study heavy quarks in the presence of higher derivative corrections. These corrections correspond to the finite coupling corrections on the properties of heavy quarks in a hot plasma. In particular, we study the effects of these corrections on the energy loss and the dissociation length of a quark-antiquark pair. We show that the calculated energy loss of heavy quarks through the plasma increases. We also find in general that the dissociation length becomes shorter with the increase of coupling parameters of higher curvature terms.
We argue, using the AdS/CFT correspondence, that the transient dynamics of the shear stress tensor in a strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM plasma is not described by relaxation-type, fluid dynamical equations: at long times the equations of motion should contain a \textit{second-order} comoving derivative of the shear stress tensor. This occurs because in this strongly-coupled system the lowest "non-hydrodynamical" quasinormal modes associated with shear stress possess a nonzero real part at zero wavenumber. We use Weyl invariance to obtain the most general equations of motion containing 2 c…
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we examine the behavior of correlators of Polyakov loops and other operators in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at non-zero temperature. The implications for Debye screening in this strongly coupled non-Abelian plasma, and comparisons with available results for thermal QCD, are discussed.
The AdS/CFT correspondence relates certain strongly coupled CFTs with large effective central charge $c_\text{eff}$ to semi-classical gravitational theories with AdS asymptotics. We describe recent progress in understanding gravity duals for CFTs on non-trivial spacetimes at finite temperature, both in and out of equilibrium. Such gravity methods provide powerful new tools to access the physics of these strongly coupled theories, which often differs qualitatively from that found at weak coupling. Our discussion begins with basic aspects of AdS/CFT and progresses through thermal CFTs on the Ein…
We give a breezy, qualitative overview of some of our recent results on studying jet stopping in strongly-coupled plasmas using gauge-gravity duality. Previously, people have found that the maximum stopping distance in such plasmas scales with energy as E^{1/3}. We show that there is an important distinction between typical and maximum stopping distances. For the strongly-coupled excitations that we study, we find that the typical stopping distance scales with energy as E^{1/4}.
We consider a heavy meson moving slowly through high temperature non-abelian plasmas. Using a simple dipole effective Lagrangian, we calculate the in-medium mass shift and the drag coefficient of the meson in $\N=4$ Super Yang Mills theory at weak and strong coupling. As anticipated, in the large $N$ limit the mass shift is finite while the drag is suppressed by $1/N^2$ . After comparing results to perturbative QCD estimates (which are also calculated), we reach the conclusion that relative to weak coupling expectations the effect of strong coupling is to reduce the momentum diffusion rate and…
This review cover our current understanding of strongly coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma (sQGP), especially theoretical progress in (i) explaining the RHIC data by hydrodynamics, (ii) describing lattice data using electric-magnetic duality; (iii) understanding of gauge-string duality known as AdS/CFT and its application for "conformal" plasma. In view of interdisciplinary nature of the subject, we include brief introduction into several topics "for pedestrians". Some fundamental questions addressed are: Why is sQGP such a good liquid? What is the nature of (de)confinement and what do we know about '…
We study the dispersion relations of mesons in a particular hot strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theory plasma. We find that at large momentum k the dispersion relations become omega = v_0 k + a + b/k + ..., where the limiting velocity v_0 is the same for mesons with any quantum numbers and depends only on the ratio of the temperature to the quark mass T/m_q. We compute a and b in terms of the meson quantum numbers and T/m_q. The limiting meson velocity v_0 becomes much smaller than the speed of light at temperatures below but close to T_diss, the temperature above which no meson bound st…
A certain identification of points in a planar Schwarzschild-anti de Sitter (AdS) black hole generates a four-dimensional static black string. In turn, a rotating black string can be obtained from a static one by means of an `illegitimate coordinate transformation', a local boost in the compact direction. On the basis of the gauge/gravity duality, these black strings are dual to rotating thermal states of a strongly interacting conformal field theory (CFT) that lives on a cylinder. In this work, we obtain the complete quasinormal mode (QNM) spectrum of the gravitational perturbations of rotati…
I describe the parton picture at strong coupling emerging from the gauge/gravity duality, with emphasis on the universality of the phenomenon of parton saturation. I discuss several consequences of this picture for the phenomenology of a strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma, which are potentially relevant for heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC.
We compute the relaxation rate of the spin density of heavy quarks in a perturbative QCD plasma to leading-log order in the coupling constant $g$. The spin relaxation rate $Γ_s$ in spin hydrodynamics is shown to be $Γ_s\sim g^4\log(1/g)T (T/M)^2$ in the heavy-quark limit $T/M\ll 1$, which is smaller than the relaxation rate of other non-hydrodynamic modes by additional powers of $T/M$. We demonstrate three different methods to evaluate the spin relaxation rate: 1) the Green-Kubo formula in the spin hydrodynamic regime, 2) the spin density correlation function in the strict hydrodynamic limit, …
We compute the dynamical relaxation times for chiral transport phenomena in strongly coupled regime using the AdS/CFT correspondence. These relaxation times can be a useful proxy for the dynamical time scale for achieving equilibrium spin-polarization of quasi-particles in the presence of magnetic field and fluid vorticity. We identify the Kubo relations for these relaxation times and clarify some previous issues regarding time-dependence of the Chiral Vortical Effect. We study the consequences of imposing time-reversal invariance on parity-odd thermal noise fluctuations that are related to ch…
We compute Schwinger-Keldysh effective action for a relativistic heavy quark (with constant background velocity) in strongly coupled N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma. The holographic dual description involves a noisy trailing string moving in Schwarzschild-AdS5 black brane. The noise is caused by Hawking radiation emitted from string worldsheet horizon. Besides quadractic terms, the effective action contains cubic interactions, which are entirely induced by the constant background velocity. The nonlinear fluctuation-dissipation relations for three-point functions are discussed based on h…
We investigate the robustness with respect to nonconformality of five properties of strongly coupled plasmas that have been calculated in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theory at nonzero temperature, motivated by the goal of understanding phenomena in heavy ion collisions. (The properties are the jet quenching parameter, the velocity dependence of screening, and the drag and transverse and longitudinal momentum diffusion coefficients for a heavy quark pulled through the plasma.) We use a toy model in which nonconformality is introduced via a one-parameter deformation of the AdS black hole…
We compute the jet quenching parameter $\hat q$ of QCD plasma in the presence of strong magnetic field in both weakly and strongly coupled regimes. In weakly coupled regime, we compute $\hat q$ in perturbative QCD at complete leading order (that is, leading log as well as the constant under the log) in QCD coupling constant $α_s$, assuming the hierarchy of scales $α_s eB\ll T^2\ll eB$. We consider two cases of jet orientations with respect to the magnetic field: 1) the case of jet moving parallel to the magnetic field, 2) the case jet moving perpendicular to the magnetic field. In the former c…
We propose a novel definition of a holographic light hadron jet and consider the phenomenological consequences, including the very first fully self-consistent, completely strong-coupling calculation of the jet nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$, which we find compares surprisingly well with recent preliminary data from LHC. We show that the thermalization distance for light parton jets is an extremely sensitive function of the \emph{a priori} unspecified string initial conditions and that worldsheets corresponding to non-asymptotic energy jets are not well approximated by a collection of nul…
In this talk I will describe various features of time dependent dynamics of strongly coupled plasma from the perspective of the AdS/CFT correspondence. I will take as an example boost invariant plasma flow and concentrate on the properties of hydrodynamic expansion, thermalization versus hydrodynamization and some features of nonequilibrium behaviour.
Using AdS/CFT, we compute the Fourier space profile of <tr F^2> generated by a heavy quark moving through a thermal plasma of strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory. We find evidence of a wake whose description includes gauge fields with large momenta. We comment on the possible relevance of our results to relativistic heavy ion collisions.
Experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have measured the net polarization of $Λ$ and $\barΛ$ hyperons and attributed it to a coupling between their spin and the vorticity of the fluid created in heavy ion collisions. Equipartition of energy is generally assumed, but the dynamical mechanism which polarizes them has yet to be determined. We consider two such mechanisms: vorticity fluctuations and helicity flip in scatterings between strange quarks and light quarks and gluons. With reasonable parameters both mechanisms lead to equilibration times orders of magnitude too large t…