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 vanishing deconfinement temperature of the set up. We discuss how these features are related to specific physics at the infrared and ultraviolet boundaries for this solution, and should not be generic properties of plasma balls.
This paper is concerned with the dynamics and interactions of Q-balls in (1+1)-dimensions. The asymptotic force between well-separated Q-balls is calculated to show that Q-balls can be attractive or repulsive depending upon their relative internal phase. An integrable model with exact multi-Q-ball solutions is investigated and found to be of use in explaining the dynamics in non-integrable theories. In particular, it is demonstrated that the dynamics of small Q-balls in a generic class of non-integrable models tends towards integrable dynamics as the charge decreases. Long-lived oscillations o…
We discuss finite regions of the deconfining phase of a confining gauge theory (plasma balls/kinks) as solitons of the large $N$, long wavelength, effective Lagrangian of the thermal gauge theory expressed in terms of suitable order parameters. We consider a class of confining gauge theories whose effective Lagrangian turns out to be a generic 1 dim. unitary matrix model. The dynamics of this matrix model can be studied by an exact mapping to a non-relativistic many fermion problem on a circle. We present an approximate solution to the equations of motion which corresponds to the motion (in Eu…
In this paper we numerically construct localised black hole solutions at the IR bottom of the confining geometry of the AdS soliton. These black holes should be thought as the finite size analogues of the domain wall solutions that have appeared previously in the literature. From the dual CFT point of view, these black holes correspond to finite size balls of deconfined plasma surrounded by the confining vacuum. The plasma ball solutions are parametrised by the temperature. For temperatures well above the deconfinement transition, the dual black holes are small and round and they are well-desc…
For a pure SU(2) Yang-Mills theory in 4D we revisit the spatial (3D), ball-like region of radius $r_0$, in its bulk subject to the pressureless, deconfining phase at $T_0=1.32\,T_c$ where $T_c$ denotes the critical temperature for the onset of the deconfining-preconfining phase transition. Such a region possesses of a finite energy density and represents the self-intersection of a figure-eight shaped center-vortex loop if a BPS monopole of core radius $\sim \frac{r_0}{52.4}$, isolated from its antimonopole by repulsion externally invoked through a transient shift of (anti)caloron holonomy (pai…
We argue for the existence of plasma-balls - meta-stable, nearly homogeneous lumps of gluon plasma at just above the deconfinement energy density - in a class of large N confining gauge theories that undergo first order deconfinement transitions. Plasma-balls decay over a time scale of order N^2 by thermally radiating hadrons at the deconfinement temperature. In gauge theories that have a dual description that is well approximated by a theory of gravity in a warped geometry, we propose that plasma-balls map to a family of classically stable finite energy black holes localized in the IR. We pre…
Plasma balls and rings emerge as fluid holographic duals of black holes and black rings in the hydrodynamic/gravity correspondence for the Scherk-Schwarz AdS system. Recently, plasma balls spinning above a critical rotation were found to be unstable against m-lobed perturbations. In the phase diagram of stationary solutions the threshold of the instability signals a bifurcation to a new phase of non-axisymmetric configurations. We find explicitly this family of solutions and represent them in the phase diagram. We discuss the implications of our results for the gravitational system. Rotating n…
Plasma balls are droplets of deconfined plasma surrounded by a confining vacuum. We present the first holographic simulation of their real-time evolution via the dynamics of localized, finite-energy black holes in the five-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) soliton background. The dual gauge theory is four-dimensional, N=4 super Yang-Mills compactified on a circle with supersymmetry-breaking boundary conditions. We consider horizonless initial data sourced by a massless scalar field. Prompt scalar field collapse then produces an excited black hole at the bottom of the geometry together with grav…
At high energy densities any quantum field theory is expected to have an effective hydrodynamic description. When combined with the gravity/gauge duality an unified picture emerges, where gravity itself can have a formal holographic hydrodynamic description. This provides a powerful tool to study black holes in a hydrodynamic setup. We study the stability of plasma balls, holographic duals of Scherck-Schwarz (SS) AdS black holes. We find that rotating plasma balls are unstable against m-lobed perturbations for rotation rates higher than a critical value. This unstable mode signals a bifurcatio…
In the Master's thesis of the author, we investigate certain aspects of gravitational physics that emerge from stochastic toy models of holographic gauge theories. We begin by reviewing field theory thermodynamics, black hole thermodynamics and how the AdS / CFT correspondence provides a link between the two. We then study a nonlinear evolution equation for the energy density that was derived last year from a random walk governed by the density of states. When one dimension is non-compact, a variety of field theories produce long lived plasma balls that are dual to black holes. This is due to …
We study the properties of the Polyakov loop in strongly-coupled gauge plasmas that are conjectured to be dual to five dimensional theories of gravity coupled to a nontrivial single scalar field. We find a gravity dual that can describe the thermodynamic properties and also the expectation value of the Polyakov loop in the deconfined phase of quenched SU(3) QCD up to $3T_c$.
We construct solutions to the relativistic Navier-Stokes equations that describe the long wavelength collective dynamics of the deconfined plasma phase of N=4 Yang Mills theory compactified down to d=3 on a Scherk-Schwarz circle and higher dimensional generalisations. Our solutions are stationary, axially symmetric spinning balls and rings of plasma. These solutions, which are dual to (yet to be constructed) rotating black holes and black rings in Scherk-Schwarz compactified AdS(5) and AdS(6), and have properties that are qualitatively similar to those of black holes and black rings in flat fi…
We construct a gravity dual of a boost-invariant flow of an N=4 SU(N) supersymmetric Yang-Mills gauge theory plasma with chemical potential. We present both a first-order corrected late-time solution in Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates and a zeroth-order solution in parametric form in Fefferman-Graham coordinates. The resulting background takes the form of a time-dependent AdS Reissner-Nordstroem-type black hole whose horizons move into the bulk of the AdS space. The solution correctly reproduces the energy and charge density as well as the viscosity of the plasma previously computed in the l…
The process of coherent creation of particle - hole excitations by an electric field in graphene is quantitatively described using a dynamic "first quantized" approach. We calculate the evolution of current density, number of pairs and energy in ballistic regime using the tight binding model. The series in electric field strength $E$ up to third order in both DC and AC are calculated. We show how the physics far from the two Dirac points enters various physical quantities in linear response and how it is related to the chiral anomaly. The third harmonic generation and the imaginary part of con…
Locally asymptotically AdS solutions of Einstein equations coupled with a vector field with a weakly curved boundary metric are found within the fluid-gravity gradient expansion up to second order in gradients. This geometry is dual to 1+3 dimensional hydrodynamics with a conserved current in a weakly curved background. The causal structure of the bulk geometry is determined and it is shown that the black brane singularity is shielded by an event horizon.
We explain a method for computing the bulk viscosity of strongly coupled thermal plasmas dual to supergravity backgrounds supported by one scalar field. Whereas earlier investigations required the computation of the leading dissipative term in the dispersion relation for sound waves, our method requires only the leading frequency dependence of an appropriate Green's function in the low-frequency limit. With a scalar potential chosen to mimic the equation of state of QCD, we observe a slight violation of the lower bound on the ratio of the bulk and shear viscosities conjectured in arXiv:0708.34…
We use AdS/CFT to investigate i) high energy collisions with balls of deconfined plasma surrounded by a confining phase and ii) the rapid localized heating of a deconfined plasma. Both of these processes are dual to collisions with black holes, where they result in the nucleation of a new "arm" of the horizon reaching out in the direction of the incident object. We study the resulting non-equilibrium dynamics in a universal limit of the gravitational physics which may indicate universal behavior of deconfined plasmas at large N_c. Process (i) produces "virtual" arms of the plasma ball, while p…
We study the thermodynamics and the jet quenching parameter of a black hole solution dual to a SQCD-like plasma which includes the backreaction of fundamental flavors. The free energy is calculated in several ways, including some recently proposed holographic renormalization prescriptions. The validity of the latter is confirmed by the consistency with the other methods. The resulting thermodynamic properties are similar to the Little String Theory ones: the temperature is fixed at the Hagedorn value and the free energy is vanishing. Finally, an accurate analysis of the relevant string configu…
We study string theory duals of the expanding boost invariant conformal gauge theory plasmas at strong coupling. The dual supergravity background is constructed as an asymptotic late-time expansion, corresponding to equilibration of the gauge theory plasma. The absence of curvature singularities in the first few orders of the late-time expansion of the dual gravitational background unambiguously determines the equilibrium equation of the state, and the shear viscosity of the gauge theory plasma. While the absence of the leading pole singularities in the gravitational curvature invariants at th…
We study string theory duals of the expanding boost invariant conformal gauge theory plasmas at strong coupling. The dual supergravity background is constructed as an asymptotic late-time expansion, corresponding to equilibration of the gauge theory plasma. The absence of curvature singularities in the first few orders of the late-time expansion of the dual gravitational background unambiguously determines the equilibrium equation of the state, and the shear viscosity of the gauge theory plasma. While the absence of the leading pole singularities in the gravitational curvature invariants at th…
We study the surface transport properties of stationary localized configurations of relativistic fluids to the first two non-trivial orders in a derivative expansion. By demanding that these finite lumps of relativistic fluid are described by a thermal partition function with arbitrary stationary background metric and gauge fields, we are able to find several constraints among surface transport coefficients. At leading order, besides recovering the surface thermodynamics, we obtain a generalization of the Young-Laplace equation for relativistic fluid surfaces, by considering a temperature depe…
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.
The phase diagram of quark gluon plasma (QGP) formed at a very early stage just after the heavy ion collision is obtained by using a holographic dual model for the heavy ion collision. In this dual model colliding ions are described by the charged shock gravitational waves. Points on the phase diagram correspond to the QGP or hadronic matter with given temperatures and chemical potentials. The phase of QGP in dual terms is related to the case when the collision of shock waves leads to formation of trapped surface. Hadronic matter and other confined states correspond to the absence of trapped s…
We construct a three-parameter family of non-extremal microstate geometries, or "microstrata," that are dual to states and deformations of the D1-D5 CFT. These families are non-extremal analogues of superstrata. We find these microstrata by using a Q-ball-inspired Ansatz that reduces the equations of motion to solving for eleven functions of one variable. We then solve this system both perturbatively and numerically and the results match extremely well. We find that the solutions have normal mode frequencies that depend upon the amplitudes of the excitations. We also show that, at higher order…
We investigate the possibility of constructing a supergravity background dual to the quark-gluon plasma using D6-branes wrapping a three-cycle in the deformed conifold. The UV-completion of this setup is given by M-theory on a G2 holonomy manifold. For the class of metrics considered we find that there are only non-extremal D-brane solutions in the limit of the singular conifold with the singularity being resolved by the D-brane horizon. The thermodynamic properties of the system show some puzzling features, such as negative specific heat at an unusual behavior of the entropy. Among the proper…
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.
The Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is the QCD phase of matter expected to be formed at small proper-times in the collision of heavy-ions at high energy. Experimental observations seem to favor a strongly coupled QCD plasma with the hydrodynamic properties of a quasi-perfect fluid, i.e. rapid thermalization (or isotropization) and small viscosity. The theoretical investigation of such properties is not obvious, due to the the strong coupling. The Gauge/Gravity correspondence provides a stimulating framework to explore the strong coupling regime of gauge theories using the dual string description. Aft…
We study non-spinning Q-balls and boson stars in 4-dimensional Anti-de Sitter (AdS) space-time. We use an exponential scalar field potential that appears in gauge-mediated supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM). We investigate the dependence of the charge and mass of these non-topological solitons on the negative cosmological constant, the frequency that appears in the periodic time-dependence as well as on the ratio between the SUSY breaking scale and the Planck mass. Next to fundamental solutions without nodes in the scalar field fu…
We employ the string/gauge theory correspondence to study properties of strongly coupled quark-gluon plasmas in thermal gauge theories with a large number of colors and flavors. In particular, we analyze non-critical string duals of conformal (S)QCD, as well as ten dimensional wrapped fivebrane duals of SQCD-like theories. We study general properties of the dual plasmas, including the drag force exerted on a probe quark and the jet quenching parameter. We find that these plasma observables depend on the number of colors and flavors in the ``QCD dual''; in particular, we find that the jet quenc…
In applying the gauge-gravity duality to the quark-gluon plasma, one models the plasma using a particular kind of field theory with specified values of the temperature, magnetic field, and so forth. One then assumes that the bulk, an asymptotically AdS black hole spacetime with properties chosen to match those of the boundary field theory, can be embedded in string theory. But this is not always the case: there are field theories with no bulk dual. The question is whether these theories might include those used to study the actual plasmas produced at such facilities as the RHIC experiment or t…
We give a simple nonsupersymmetric example in which chronology protection follows from unitarity and the AdS/CFT correspondence. We consider a ball of homogeneous, rotating dust in global AdS3 whose backreaction produces a region of Goedel space inside the ball. We solve the Israel matching conditions to find the geometry outside of the dust ball and compute its quantum numbers in the dual CFT. When the radius of the dust ball exceeds a certain critical value, the spacetime will contain closed timelike curves. Our main observation is that precisely when this critical radius is exceeded, a unit…
We review the construction of gravitational solutions holographically dual to N=1 quiver gauge theories with dynamical flavor multiplets. We focus on the D3-D7 construction and consider the finite temperature, finite quark chemical potential case where there is a charged black hole in the dual solution. Discussed physical outputs of the model include its thermodynamics (with susceptibilities) and general hydrodynamic properties.
We begin the exploration of holographic duals to theories with generalised global (higher-form) symmetries. In particular, we focus on the case of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in strongly coupled plasmas by constructing and analysing a holographic dual to a recent, generalised global symmetry-based formulation of dissipative MHD. The simplest holographic dual to the effective theory of MHD that was proposed as a description of plasmas with any equation of state and transport coefficients contains dynamical graviton and two-form gauge field fluctuations in a magnetised black brane background. The…
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 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.
