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 literature.
In this work, we perform a holographic analysis to study non local observables associated to a uniformly \textit{boosted} strongly coupled large $N$ thermal plasma in $d$-dimensions. In order to accomplish the holographic analysis, the appropriate dual bulk theory turns out to be $d+1$ dimensional \textit{boosted} AdS-Schwarzschild blackhole background. In particular, we compute entanglement entropy of the boosted plasma at high temperature living inside a strip geometry with entangling width $l$ in the boundary at a particular instant of time. We also study the two-point correlators in the bo…
Prior attempts to construct the gravity dual of boost-invariant flow of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills gauge theory plasma suffered from apparent curvature singularities in the late time expansion. This Letter shows how these problems can be resolved by a different choice of expansion parameter. The calculations presented correctly reproduce the plasma energy-momentum tensor within the framework of second order viscous hydrodynamics.
We study the AC optical and hall conductivities of Dp/Dq-branes intersections in the probe approximation and use sum-rules to study various associated transport coefficients. We determine that the presence of massive fundamental matter, as compared to massless fundamental matter described holographically by a theory with no dimensional defects, reduces the plasma frequency. We further show that this is not the case when the brane intersections include defects. We discuss in detail how to implement correctly the regularization of retarded Green's functions so that the dispersion relations are s…
Gauge theory/string theory holographic correspondence for ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory is well under control in the planar limit, and for large (infinitely large) 't Hooft coupling, $λ\to \infty$. Certain aspects of the correspondence can be extended including ${\cal O}(λ^{-3/2})$ corrections. There are no reliable first principle computations of the ${\cal N}=4$ plasma non-equilibrium properties beyond the stated order. We show extreme sensitivity of the non-hydrodynamic spectra of holographic ${\cal N}=4$ SYM plasma to ${\cal O}(λ^{-3})$ corrections, challenging any conclusi…
A heavy quark moving through a strongly coupled deconfined plasma has a holographic dual description as a string moving in a black brane geometry. We apply the holographic Wilsonian renormalization method to derive a holographic effective string action dual to the heavy quark. The effective action only depends on the geometry between the black brane horizon and a cutoff localized in the radial direction, corresponding to the IR of the dual theory. We derive RG flow equations for the coefficients in the effective action and show that the force acting on the heavy quark is independent of the pos…
A novel technique is used to compute the bulk viscosity of high temperature holographic gauge theory plasmas with softly broken conformal symmetry. Working in a black hole background which corresponds to a non-trivial solution to the Navier-Stokes equation, and using a Ward identity for the trace of the stress-energy tensor, it is possible to obtain an analytic expression for the bulk viscosity. This can be used to verify the high temperature limit of a conjectured bound on the bulk viscosity for these theories. The bound is saturated when the conformal symmetry-breaking operator becomes margi…
At strong coupling holographic studies have shown that heavy ion collisions do not obey normal boost invariance. Here we study a modified boost invariance through a complex shift in time, and show that this leads to surprisingly good agreement with numerical holographic computations. When including perturbations the agreement becomes even better, both in the hydrodynamic and the far-from-equilibrium regime. One of the main advantages is an analytic formulation of the stress-energy tensor of the longitudinal dynamics of holographic heavy ion collisions.
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 investigate the holographic entanglement entropy of deformed conformal field theories which are dual to a cutoff AdS space. The holographic entanglement entropy evaluated on a three-dimensional Poincare AdS space with a finite cutoff can be reinterpreted as that of the dual field theory deformed by either a boost or $T \bar{T}$ deformation. For the boost case, we show that, although it trivially acts on the underlying theory, it nontrivially affects the entanglement entropy due to the length contraction. For a three-dimensional AdS, we show that the effect of the boost transformation can be…
We use alternative quantisation of the $D3/D5$ system to explore properties of a strongly coupled charged plasma and strongly coupled anyonic fluids. The $S$-transform of the $D3/D5$ system is used as a model for charged matter interacting with a U(1) gauge field in the large coupling regime, and we compute the dispersion relationship of the propagating electromagnetic modes as the density and temperature are changed. A more general $SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ transformation gives a strongly interacting anyonic fluid, and we study its transport properties as we change the statistics of the anyons and t…
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…
Thin-shell AdS-Vaidya spacetimes can be considered as holographic models of the thermalization process in strongly-coupled conformal field theories following a rapid injection of energy from an external source. While the expected thermalization time is the inverse temperature, Bhattacharyya and Minwalla have pointed out that bulk causality implies that expectation values of local field-theory observables actually take on their thermal values immediately following the injection. In this paper we study two-point functions, for which the causality argument does not apply. Specifically, we study t…
We study phase diagram of the dense holographic gauge matter in the Sakai-Sugimoto model in the presence of the magnetic field above the deconfinement temperature. Even above the deconfinement, quarks could form colour bound states through the remaining strong interaction if the density is large. We demonstrate that in the presence of the magnetic field for a sufficiently large baryon density, the multiquark-pion gradient (MQ-$\mathcal{5}ϕ$) phase is more thermodynamically preferred than the chiral-symmetric quark-gluon plasma. The phase diagrams between the holographic multiquark and the chir…
The finite temperature physics of the pure glue sector in the improved holographic QCD model of arXiv:0707.1324 and arXiv:0707.1349 is addressed. The thermodynamics of 5D dilaton gravity duals to confining gauge theories is analyzed. We show that they exhibit a first order Hawking-Page type phase transition. In the explicit background of arXiv:0707.1349, we find T_c = 235 MeV. The temperature dependence of various thermodynamic quantities such as the pressure, entropy and speed of sound is calculated. The results show a good agreement with the corresponding lattice data.
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.
Recently Eling and Oz [1] proposed a simple formula for the bulk viscosity of holographic plasma. They argued that the formula is valid in the high temperature (near-conformal) regime, but is expected to break down at low temperatures. We point out that the formula is in perfect agreement with the previous computations of the bulk viscosity of the cascading plasma [2,3], as well as with the previous computations of the bulk viscosity of N=2^* plasma [4,5]. In the latter case it correctly reproduces the critical behaviour of the bulk viscosity in the vicinity of the critical point with the vani…
We use the holographic principle to study quark jets with trailing strings in an expanding plasma that asymptotes Bjorken hydrodynamics. We make use of the fact that the trailing string is the locus of the light delay in bulk to obtain the explicit form for quark jets in the expanding plasma. From the trailing string solution we calculate the drag coefficient of a heavy quark in the strongly coupled expanding plasma. The energy scaling of the maximum penetration length of an ultrarelativistic light quark jet using light rays in bulk is estimated.
We study the Schwinger effect with a moving D3-brane in a $\mathcal{N}$=4 SYM plasma with the aid of AdS/CFT correspondence. We discuss the test particle pair moving transverse and parallel to the plasma wind respectively. It is found that for both cases the presence of velocity tends to increase the Schwinger effect. In addition, the velocity has a stronger influence on the Schwinger effect when the pair moves transverse to the plasma wind rather than parallel.
We consider the effect of a periodic perturbation with frequency $ω$ on the holographic N=4 plasma represented by the planar AdS black hole. The response of the system is given by exponentially decaying waves. The corresponding complex wave numbers can be found by solving wave equations in the AdS black hole background with infalling boundary conditions on the horizon in an analogous way as in the calculation of quasinormal modes. The complex momentum eigenvalues have an interpretation as poles of the retarded Green's functions, where the inverse of the imaginary part gives an absorption lengt…
We discuss string theory alpha' corrections in the dual description of the expanding boost invariant N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma at strong coupling. We compute finite 't Hooft coupling corrections to the shear viscosity and find that it disagrees with the equilibrium correlation function computations. We comment on the possible source of the discrepancy.
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 study hydrodynamics of four-dimensional non-conformal holographic plasma with non-equal central charges $c\ne a$ at the ultraviolet fixed point. We compute equation of state, the speed of sound waves, transport coefficients (shear and bulk viscosities), and discuss causality. We study the asymptotic character of the hydrodynamic series for the homogeneous and isotropic expansion of the plasma. We perform computations for finite $c-a\ne 0$, but to leading nonvanishing order in the conformal symmetry breaking coupling.
We review construction of the improved holographic models for QCD-like confining gauge theories and their applications to the physics of the Quark-gluon plasma. We also review recent progress in this area of research. The lecture notes start from the vacuum structure of these theories, then develop thermodynamic and hydrodynamic observables and end with more advanced topics such as the holographic QCD in the presence of external magnetic fields. This is a summary of the lectures presented at the 56th Cracow School of Theoretical Physics in Spring 2016 at Zakopane, Poland.
Motivated by gauge theory/string theory correspondence, a lower bound on the bulk viscosity of strongly coupled gauge theory plasma was proposed in arXiv:0708.3459. We consider strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma compactified on a two-manifold of constant curvature beta. We show that the effective (1+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic description of the system is governed by the bulk viscosity violating the bound of arXiv:0708.3459, once beta<0.
Using the framework of higher-form global symmetries, we examine the regime of validity of force-free electrodynamics by evaluating the lifetime of the electric field operator, which is non-conserved due to screening effects. We focus on a holographic model which has the same global symmetry as that of low energy plasma and obtain the lifetime of (non-conserved) electric flux in a strong magnetic field regime. The lifetime is inversely correlated to the magnetic field strength and thus suppressed in the strong field regime.
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…
In this study, the gauge/string duality is used to investigate the dynamics of a moving heavy quark in a strongly coupled, non-conformal plasma. The drag force in this non-conformal model is smaller than that of $\mathcal{N} = 4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) plasma and decreases as the level of non-conformality is increased. At intermediate temperatures, the world-sheet temperature, which is derived numerically by calculating the world-sheet horizon, deviates from its conformal value, but at high temperatures, it tends to its conformal value.
The dynamic of string fluctuation under rotating BTZ black hole is studied using the method of \cite{Son:2009vu}. We compare the result with previous computation in \cite{Atmaja:2012jg}, with a different method, for the case of co-rotating string. The result gives definite answer that the end of string identified as an external quark at the boundary behaves as Brownian particle with mass is given an effective mass $M_{eff}$ equal to the zero temperature mass of external quark $M_0$ times Lorentz factor $γ$ to the power three. We also extend the computation for general case of rotating black ho…
In this dissertation we use the D3/D7 model in gauge/gravity duality to investigate the effects of finite temperature and particle density on matter in strongly coupled super-Yang-Mills gauge theories, which we interpret as models for the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). We start with an introduction to the AdS/CFT correspondence and the setup we use subsequently. We then investigate the effects of finite temperature and particle density on fundamental matter from three different viewpoints. (i) We study meson spectra. Our observations at finite temperature and particle density are in qualitative agr…
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 Brownian motion of a heavy quark in field theory plasma in the AdS/CFT setup and discuss the time scales characterizing the interaction between the Brownian particle and plasma constituents. In particular, the mean-free-path time is related to the connected 4-point function of the random force felt by the Brownian particle. By holographically computing the 4-point function and regularizing the IR divergence appearing in the computation, we write down a general formula for the mean-free-path time, and apply it to the STU black hole which corresponds to plasma charged under three U(1) R…
We present the results of a holographic model for heavy vector mesons inside a plasma at finite temperature and density. The spectral function shows a nice description of the dissociation of the mesons in the medium, corresponding to the decrease in the height of the peaks as the temperature and (or) the density increase. We consider the case of bottomonium states at finite temperature and also the case of charmonium dissociation at zero temperature but finite chemical potential.
This note contains discussions on the entanglement entropy and mutual information of a strongly coupled field theory with a critical point which has a holographic dual. We investigate analytically, in the specific regimes of parameters, how these non-local operators behave near the critical point. Interestingly, we observe that although the mutual information is constant at the critical point, its slope shows a power-law divergence in the vicinity of the critical point. We show that the leading behavior of mutual information at and near the critical point could yield a set of critical exponent…
Using the gauge/gravity duality we calculate the heavy quark-antiquark potential in a hot, anisotropic and strongly coupled Yang-Mills plasma in (3+1)-dimensions. As the anisotropic medium we take a deformed version of \mathcal{N} = 4 super Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature following a recent work where the dual type IIB supergravity solution is also proposed. We turn on a small value of the anisotropy parameter, for which the gravity dual is known analytically (perturbatively), and compute the velocity-dependent quark-antiquark interaction potential when the pair is moving through the p…
We study in detail the transverse collective modes of simple holographic models in presence of electromagnetic Coulomb interactions. We render the Maxwell gauge field dynamical via mixed boundary conditions, corresponding to a double trace deformation in the boundary field theory. We consider three different situations: (i) a holographic plasma with conserved momentum, (ii) a holographic (dirty) plasma with finite momentum relaxation and (iii) a holographic viscoelastic plasma with propagating transverse phonons. We observe two interesting new features induced by the Coulomb interactions: a mo…
We provide a short review of the hydrodynamical properties of a class of strongly coupled thermal gauge theories, coupled to massless fundamental flavor fields, having a dual supergravity description. The analysis is valid for more general classes of nearly conformal holographic plasmas, where the breaking of conformality is driven by marginally (ir)relevant deformations.
We analytically compute the out-of-equilibrium direct photon production rate and electric conductivity, in a strongly coupled and expanding Bjorken plasma, from holography. Our results are valid at late times where the expanding plasma asymptotes Bjorken hydrodynamics. The out-of-equilibrium rates are substantially harder and larger, early on in the Bjorken expansion phase.
Non-central heavy ion collisions lead to the production of a quark gluon plasma with angular momentum. We investigate, using holographic AdS/QCD models, how does rotation of the medium affects the confinement/deconfinement transition temperature $T_c$. In holographic models, this transition is represented by a Hawking-Page process involving two asymptotically anti-de Sitter spaces. The plasma is represented here by extending the holographic approach to anti-de Sitter spaces with cylindrical symmetry. Then, the rotation of the medium is introduced through a Lorentz boost. We consider hard and s…
We employ methods of gauge/string duality to analyze the Brownian motion and the concomitant Langevin equation of a heavy quark in a strongly coupled, thermal, anisotropic Yang-Mills plasma. We consider fluctuations both along and perpendicular to the direction of anisotropy and study the effects of anisotropy on the drag coefficient, the diffusion constant and the Langevin coefficient for both the directions. We also verify the fluctuation-dissipation theorem for Brownian motion in an anisotropic medium.
We construct the supergravity dual of the hot quark-gluon plasma in the mass-deformed ${\cal N}=4$ Super-Yang-Mills theory (also known as ${\cal N}=1^*$). The full ten-dimensional type IIB holographic dual is described by 20 functions of two variables, which we determine numerically, and it contains a black hole with $S^5$ horizon topology. As we lower the temperature to around half of the mass of the chiral multiplets, we find evidence for (most likely a first-order) phase transition, which could lead either to one of the Polchinski-Strassler confining, screening, or oblique vacua with polari…
We study the magnetic properties of the coloured multiquark states in the quark-gluon plasma where the gluons are deconfined and the chiral symmetry is still broken, using the Sakai-Sugimoto model. There are two possible magnetized multiquark configurations. Both configurations converge to the same configuration at the critical field and temperature before they dissociate altogether either into less coloured multiquarks or into other phases for a fixed density. It is also found that the multiquarks with higher colour charges respond more to the external magnetic field in both the magnetization…
Holography provides a novel method to study the physics of Quark Gluon Plasmas, complementary to the ordinary field theory and lattice approaches. In this context, we analyze the informations that can be obtained for strongly coupled Plasmas containing dynamical flavors, also in the presence of a finite baryon chemical potential. In particular, we discuss the jet quenching and the hydrodynamic transport coefficients.
The relaxation of a strongly coupled plasma towards the hydrodynamic regime is studied by analyzing the evolution of local and nonlocal observables in the holographic approach. The system is driven in an initial anisotropic and far-from equilibrium state through an impulsive time-dependent deformation (quench) of the boundary spacetime geometry. Effective temperature and entropy density are related to the position and area of a black hole horizon, which has formed as a consequence of the distortion. The behavior of stress-energy tensor, equal-time correlation functions and Wilson loops of diff…
We analyse classical string configurations with non-trivial transverse dynamics in $AdS_5$-Schwarzschild. These strings develop kink-like structures which, via the gauge/gravity duality, can be interpreted as the propagation of hard gluons produced in association with a quark-antiquark pair in a strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM plasma. We observe the appearance of two physically distinct regimes of the in-plasma dynamics, depending on whether the medium is able to resolve the transverse structure of the string prior to its total quench. From these studies we extract the medium resolution s…
Recently, a direct signature of chaos in many body system has been realized from the energy density retarded Green's function using the phenomenon of `pole skipping'. Moreover, special locations in the complex frequency and momentum plane are found, known as the pole skipping points such that the retarded Green's function can not be defined uniquely there. In this paper, we compute the correction/shift to the pole skipping points due to a spatial anisotropy in a holographic system by performing near horizon analysis of EOMs involving different bulk field perturbations, namely the scalar, the a…
We estimate the ratio of the thermalization time over the freeze-out time using a holographic AdS-Vaidya model for quark-gluon plasma formed in the heavy ion collisions. In the model the process of thermalization is described as formation of the black hole in AdS space while dethermalization process, related with the freeze-out, as the black hole evaporation due to the Hawking radiation that is modeled by the Vaidya metric with a negative mass. In this model the thermalization takes place only at small scales and absent in the infrared region. At small scales the system tends towards a state o…
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…
Based on a holographic far-from-equilibrium calculation of the chiral magnetic effect~(CME) in an expanding quark gluon plasma, we study collisions at various energies. We compute the time evolution of the CME current in the presence of a time-dependent axial charge density and subject to a time-dependent magnetic field. The plasma expansion leads to a dilution of the CME current. We study distinct combinations of how the initial magnetic field and initial axial charge behave with changing initial energy as proposed in previous literature. Most scenarios we consider lead to an increasing time-…
Motivated by recent studies of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) off the $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills (SYM) plasma, holographically dual to $AdS_5\times S^5$ black hole, we in this note use the spacelike flavor current to probe the internal structure of one holographic quark-gluon plasma, which is described by the Sakai-Sugimoto model at high temperature phase (i.e., the chiral symmetric phase). The plasma structure function is extracted from the retarded flavor current-current correlator. Our main aim here is to explore the effect of non-conformality on these physical quantities. As usual, …
We study the conductivity and shear viscosity tensors of a strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills plasma which is kept anisotropic by a theta parameter that depends linearly on one of the spatial dimensions. Its holographic dual is given by an anisotropic axion-dilaton-gravity background and has recently been proposed by Mateos and Trancanelli as a model for the pre-equilibrium stage of quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions. By applying the membrane paradigm which we also check by numerical evaluation of Kubo formula and lowest lying quasinormal modes, we find that the shear viscosity pure…
We study far-from-equilibrium physics of strongly interacting plasmas at criticality and zero charge density for a wide range of dynamical scaling exponents z in d dimensions using holographic methods. In particular, we consider homogeneous isotropization of asymptotically Lifshitz black branes with full backreaction. We find stable evolution and equilibration times that exhibit small dependence of z and are of the order of the inverse temperature. Performing a quasinormal mode analysis we find a corresponding narrow range of relaxation times, fully characterized by the fraction z/(d-1). For z…
