V. Balasubramanian, A. Bernamonti, J. de Boer, N. Copland, B. Craps, E. Keski-Vakkuri, B. Müller, A. Schäfer, M. Shigemori, W. Staessens
备注：
4 pages, 4 figures + 1 figure (v2), v2: new results added on entanglement entropy in 4d field theories and on entropy growth rate, v3: published version
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we probe the scale-dependence of thermalization in strongly coupled field theories following a quench via saddlepoint calculations of 2-point functions, Wilson loops and entanglement entropy in $d=2,3,4$. For homogeneous initial conditions, the entanglement entropy thermalizes slowest, and sets a timescale for equilibration that saturates a causality bound. The growth rate of entanglement entropy density is nearly volume-independent for small volumes, but slows for larger volumes. In this strongly coupled setting, the UV thermalizes first.
We use a holographic method to investigate thermalization of a boost-invariant strongly interacting non-Abelian plasma. Boundary sourcing, a distorsion of the boundary metric, is employed to drive the system far from equilibrium. Thermalization is analyzed through nonlocal probes: the equal-time two-point correlation function of large conformal dimension operators in the boundary theory, and Wilson loops of different shapes. We study the dependence of the thermalization time on the size of the probes, and compare the results to the ones obtained using local observables: the onset of thermaliza…
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 the AdS/CFT correspondence, we compute the radiative energy loss of a slowly decelerating heavy quark with mass M moving through a supersymmetric Yang Mills (SYM) plasma at temperature T at large t'Hooft coupling λ. The calculation is carried out in terms of perturbation in \sqrtλT/M, and the rate of the energy loss is computed up to second order. We explain the physical meaning of each correction and estimate the thermalization time of a heavy quark moving in a strongly-coupled plasma.
We study thermalization of strongly coupled gauge theory plasma in the presence of magnetic field using the AdS/CFT correspondence. We utilize the falling energy-shell model as a holographic description of gauge theory plasma undergoing thermalization, and find the effect of magnetic field on thermalization time in various space-time dimensions. Our results demonstrate that magnetic field universally hastens thermalization of strongly coupled gauge theory plasma.
Using gauge/gravity duality methods, we study the relaxation towards equilibrium of strongly interacting non-Abelian matter. We adopt boundary sourcing to drive the system out-of-equilibrium, and analyze the equilibration process through local probes (energy density and pressures) and nonlocal probes (lengths of the geodesics between two boundary points and extremal surfaces having a Wilson loop as contour on the boundary). We also investigate the real-time dissociation of the heavy quarkonium in the out-of-equilibrium plasma. Systematic comparison with the results of a geometry dual to viscou…
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence for strongly coupled gauge theories, we calculate thermalization of mesons caused by a time-dependent change of a baryon number chemical potential. On the gravity side, the thermalization corresponds to a horizon formation on the probe flavor brane in the AdS throat. Since heavy ion collisions are locally approximated by a sudden change of the baryon number chemical potential, we discuss implication of our results to RHIC and LHC experiments, to find a rough estimate of rather rapid thermalization time-scale t_{th} < 1 [fm/c]. We also discuss universality of ou…
I propose a method, based on a set of Langevin equations, for bringing classical gauge theories to thermal equilibrium while respecting the set of Gauss' constraints exactly. The algorithm is described in detail for the SU(2) gauge theory with or without the Higgs doublet. As an example of application, canonical average of the maximal Lyapunov exponent is computed for the SU(2) Yang-Mills theory.
To describe theoretically the creation and evolution of the quark-gluon plasma, one typically employs three ingredients: a model for the initial state, non-hydrodynamic early time evolution, and hydrodynamics. In this paper we study the non-hydrodynamic early time evolution using the AdS/CFT correspondence in the presence of inhomogeneities. We find that the AdS description of the early time evolution is well-matched by free streaming. Near the end of the early time interval where our analytic computations are reliable, the stress tensor agrees with the second order hydrodynamic stress tensor …
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we probe the scale-dependence of thermalization in strongly coupled field theories following a quench, via calculations of two-point functions, Wilson loops and entanglement entropy in d=2,3,4. In the saddlepoint approximation these probes are computed in AdS space in terms of invariant geometric objects - geodesics, minimal surfaces and minimal volumes. Our calculations for two-dimensional field theories are analytical. In our strongly coupled setting, all probes in all dimensions share certain universal features in their thermalization: (1) a slight delay in…
The nonextreme Dp-brane solutions in type II supergravity(in the near-horizon limit) are expected to be dual to (p+1)-dimensional noncompact supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories at finite temperature. We study the translationally invariant perturbations along the branes in those backgrounds and calculate quasinormal frequencies numerically. These frequencies should determine the thermalization time scales in the dual Yang-Mills theories.
Using Wigner transforms of Green functions, we discuss non-equilibrium generalizations of spectral functions and occupation numbers. We develop methods for computing time-dependent spectral functions in conformal field theories holographically dual to thin-shell AdS-Vaidya spacetimes.
Free or integrable theories are usually considered to be too constrained to thermalize. For example, the retarded two-point function of a free field, even in a thermal state, does not decay to zero at long times. On the other hand, the magnetic susceptibility of the critical transverse field Ising is known to thermalize, even though that theory can be mapped by a Jordan-Wigner transformation to that of free fermions. We reconcile these two statements by clarifying under which conditions conserved charges can prevent relaxation at the level of linear response and how such obstruction can be ove…
We employ the holographic approach to study the thermalization in the quenched strongly-coupled field theories with very general anisotropic scalings including Lifshitz and hyperscaling violating fixed points. The holographic dual is a Vaidya-like time-dependent geometry where the asymptotic metric has general anisotropic scaling isometries. We find the Ryu-Takanayagi extremal surface and use it to calculate the time-dependent entanglement entropy between a strip region with width $2R$ and its outside region. In the special case with an isotropic metric, we also explore the entanglement entrop…
The apparent early thermalization of quark-gluon plasma produced at RHIC and LHC has motivated a number of studies of strongly coupled ${\mathcal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory using the AdS/CFT correspondence. Here we present the results of numerical simulations of Bjorken flow aimed at establishing typical features of the dynamics. This is done by evolving a large number of far from equilibrium initial states well into the hydrodynamic regime. The results strongly suggest that early thermalization is generic in this theory, taking place at proper times around $0.6$ in units of invers…
We study the production of prompt photons in strongly coupled out-of-equilibrium Super Yang-Mills plasma using the AdS/CFT correspondence. Our goal is to determine the photon emission spectrum at different stages of a thermalization process, which is modeled via the gravitational collapse of a thin spherical shell in AdS$_5$ space. Particular emphasis is placed on the limit of large frequencies, which we are able to treat analytically.
Using gauge/gravity duality, we study the thermalization of strongly coupled N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma. We analyze the expectation value of the stress tensor and scalar correlation functions and the applicability of the fluctuation dissipation theorem. Via gauge/gravity duality, this maps into studying the equilibration of a black hole geometry and its Hawking radiation.
Quantum field theories of strongly interacting matter sometimes have a useful holographic description in terms of the variables of a gravitational theory in higher dimensions. This duality maps time dependent physics in the gauge theory to time dependent solutions of the Einstein equations in the gravity theory. In order to better understand the process by which "real world" theories such as QCD behave out of thermodynamic equilibrium, we study time dependent perturbations to states in a model of a confining, strongly coupled gauge theory via holography. Operationally, this involves solving a …
We employ the AdS/CFT correspondence to investigate the thermalization of the strongly-coupled plasma and the jet quenching of a hard probe traversing such a thermalizing medium.
In this paper we study thermalization in a strongly coupled system via AdS/CFT. Initially, the energy is injected into the system by turning on a spatially homogenous scalar source coupled to a marginal composite operator. The thermalization process is studied by numerically solving Einstein's equations coupled to a massless scalar field in the Poincare patch of AdS_5. We define a thermalization time t_T on the AdS side, which has an interpretation in terms of a spacelike Wilson loop <W(l =1/T)> in CFT. Here T is the thermal equilibrium temperature. We study both cases with the source turned o…
We consider 2d QFTs as relevant deformations of CFTs in the thermodynamic limit. Using causality and KPZ universality, we place a lower bound on the timescale characterizing the onset of hydrodynamics. The bound is determined parametrically in terms of the temperature and the scale associated with the relevant deformation. This bound is typically much stronger than $\frac{1}{T}$, the expected quantum equilibration time. Subluminality of sound further allows us to define a thermodynamic $C$-function, and constrain the sign of the $\mathcal T\bar{\mathcal T}$ term in EFTs.
The AdS/CFT correspondence is one of the most important discoveries in theoretical physics in recent years. It states that certain quantum mechanical theories can actually be described by classical gravity in one higher dimension, in a spacetime called anti-de Sitter (AdS) space. What makes this duality so useful is that it relates theories with weak coupling to theories with strong coupling and thus provides a new tool for tackling strongly coupled quantum field theories, which are notoriously difficult to handle using conventional methods. During the course of my PhD I have mostly studied ti…
We initiate the study of equilibration rates of strongly coupled quark-gluon plasmas in the absence of conformal symmetry. We primarily consider a supersymmetric mass deformation within ${\cal N}=2^{*}$ gauge theory and use holography to compute quasinormal modes of a variety of scalar operators, as well as the energy-momentum tensor. In each case, the lowest quasinormal frequency, which provides an approximate upper bound on the thermalization time, is proportional to temperature, up to a pre-factor with only a mild temperature dependence. We find similar behaviour in other holographic plasma…
Gauge/gravity duality has provided unprecedented opportunities to study dynamics in certain strongly coupled gauge theories. This review aims to highlight several applications to heavy ion collisions including far-from-equilibrium dynamics, hydrodynamics and jet energy loss at strong coupling.
Strongly correlated systems far from equilibrium can exhibit scaling solutions with a dynamically generated weak coupling. We show this by investigating isolated systems described by relativistic quantum field theories for initial conditions leading to nonequilibrium instabilities, such as parametric resonance or spinodal decomposition. The non-thermal fixed points prevent fast thermalization if classical-statistical fluctuations dominate over quantum fluctuations. We comment on the possible significance of these results for the heating of the early universe after inflation and the question of…
We revisit certain aspects of thermalization in 2D CFT. In particular, we consider similarities and differences between the time dependence of correlation functions in various states in rational and non-rational CFTs. We also consider the distinction between global and local thermalization and explain how states obtained by acting with a diffeomorphism on the ground state can appear locally thermal, and we review why the time-dependent expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor is generally a poor diagnostic of global thermalization. Since all 2D CFTs have an infinite set of commuting con…
Within a holographic model, we calculate the time evolution of 2-point and 1-point correlation functions (of selected operators) within a charged strongly coupled system of many particles. That system is thermalizing from an anisotropic initial charged state far from equilibrium towards equilibrium while subjected to a constant external magnetic field. One main result is that thermalization times for 2-point functions are significantly (approximately three times) larger than those of 1-point functions. Magnetic field and charge amplify this difference, generally increasing thermalization times…
The mutual and tripartite information between pairs and triples of disjoint regions in a quantum field theory are sensitive probes of the spread of correlations in an equilibrating system. We compute these quantities in strongly coupled two-dimensional conformal field theories with a gravity dual following the homogenous deposition of energy. The injected energy is modeled in anti-de Sitter space as an infalling shell, and the information shared by disjoint intervals is computed in terms of geodesic lengths in this background. For given widths and separation of the intervals, the mutual inform…
The sudden injection of energy in a strongly coupled conformal field theory and its subsequent thermalization can be holographically modeled by a shell falling into anti-de Sitter space and forming a black brane. For a homogeneous shell, Bhattacharyya and Minwalla were able to study this process analytically using a weak field approximation. Motivated by event-by-event fluctuations in heavy ion collisions, we include inhomogeneities in this model, obtaining analytic results in a long wavelength expansion. In the early-time window in which our approximations can be trusted, the resulting evolut…
We study thermalization of a strongly coupled theory holographically dual to a thin shell of null dust with non-zero angular momentum collapsing to Kerr-AdS. We calculate thermalization time for two point correlation functions. It happens that in the 3-dimensional case the thermalization time is just proportional to the distance between points where the correlator is evaluated. This is a very surprising and rather unexpected generalization of the same relation in the case of zero momentum.
We study the lightlike and timelike R-current correlators in the AdS-Vaidya spacetime, which are associated with the production of prompt photons and dileptons from a nonequilibrium, rapidly thermalizing, and strongly coupled plasma in the AdS/CFT correspondence. In particular, we focus on the photon production. We find that the amplitude of the photon-emission spectrum increases during the thermalization of the medium. Also, the time-dependent emission rate for hard photons has an oscillatory pattern and thermalizes faster than soft photons.
We present holographic descriptions of thermalization in conformal field theories using probe D-branes in AdS X S space-times. We find that the induced metrics on Dp-brane worldvolumes which are rotating in an internal sphere direction have horizons with characteristic Hawking temperatures even if there is no black hole in the bulk AdS. The AdS/CFT correspondence applied to such systems indeed reveals thermal properties such as Brownian motions and AC conductivities in the dual conformal field theories. We also use this framework to holographically analyze time-dependent systems undergoing a q…
We study the characteristics of thermalizing and non-thermalizing operators in integrable theories as we turn on a non-integrable deformation. Specifically, we show that $σ^z$, an operator that thermalizes in the integrable transverse field Ising model, has mean matrix elements that resemble ETH, but with fluctuations around the mean that are sharply suppressed. This suppression rapidly dwindles as the Ising model becomes non-integrable by the turning on of a longitudinal field. We also construct a non-thermalizing operator in the integrable regime, which slowly approaches the ETH form as the …
In this paper we study the thermalization of a spatially homogeneous system in a strongly coupled CFT. The non-equilibrium initial state is created by switching on a relevant perturbation in the CFT vacuum during Delta t >= t >= -Delta t. Via AdS/CFT, the thermalization process corresponds to the gravitational collapse of a tachyonic scalar field (m^2 = -3) in the Poincare patch of AdS_5. In the limit Delta t < 0.02/T, the thermalization time t_T is found to be quantitatively the same as that of a non-equilibrium state created by a marginal perturbation discussed in Ref. [5]. In the case Delta…
In the AdS/CFT framework meson thermalization in the presence of a constant external magnetic field in a strongly coupled gauge theory has been studied. In the gravitational description the thermalization of mesons corresponds to the horizon formation on the flavour D7-brane which is embedded in the AdS_5 x S^5 background in the probe limit. The apparent horizon forms due to the time-dependent change in the baryon number chemical potential, the injection of baryons in the gauge theory. We will numerically show that the thermalization happens even faster in the presence of the magnetic field on…
We analyze vacuum instability of strongly coupled gauge theories in a constant electric field using AdS/CFT correspondence. The model is the N=2 1-flavor supersymmetric large N_c QCD in the strong 't Hooft coupling limit. We calculate the Euler-Heisenberg effective Lagrangian L(E), which encodes the nonlinear response and the quantum decay rate of the vacuum in a background electric field E, from the complex D-brane action in AdS/CFT. We find that the decay rate given by Im L(E) becomes nonzero above a critical electric field set by the confining force between quarks. A large-E expansion of Im…
We investigate the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) in d+1 dimensional conformal field theories by studying reduced density matrices in energy eigenstates. We show that if local probes of high energy primary eigenstates satisfy ETH, then any finite energy observable with support on a subsystem of finite size satisfies ETH. In two dimensions, we discover that if ETH holds locally, the finite size reduced density matrix of states created by heavy primary operators is well-approximated by a projection to the Virasoro identity block.
The Oppenheimer-Snyder model, which describes the gravitational collapse of a ball of dust, can be used to model thermalization of strongly coupled systems using the AdS/CFT-duality. It can be used as an alternative to the previously widely used thin-shell model in the context of holographic thermalization. We solve the dynamics of the Oppenheimer-Snyder collapse in asymptotically AdS space-times and compute the two-point function of a boundary spectator field in the geodesic approximation. As a comparison we perform the same computation in the thin-shell model and discover oscillatory solutio…
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…
Deep Thermalization and Measurements of Quantum Resources
Pitaevskii BEC Center, CNR-INO and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trento（庞塔夫斯基玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚中心，意大利国家研究委员会意大利国家光学研究所和特伦托大学物理系）；INFN-TIFPA, Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics and Applications（意大利国家核物理研究所-特伦托基础物理与应用研究所）
We study the thermalization of a class of 4-dimensional strongly coupled theories dual to a 5-dimensional AdS-Vaidya spacetime with Gauss-Bonnet curvature corrections. We probe the thermalization using the two-point functions, the expectation values of circular Wilson loops and entanglement entropy. When boundary separation is small, we observe that the thermalization times of these observables have the weak dependence on the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant $α$. In addition, the growth rate of entanglement entropy density is nearly volume-independent. We also show that a new kind of swallow-tai…
We investigate jet quenching of virtual gluons and thermalization of a strongly-coupled plasma with a non-zero chemical potential via the gauge/gravity duality. By tracking a charged shell falling in an asymptotic AdS$_{d+1}$ background for $d=3$ and $d=4$, which is characterized by the AdS-Reissner-Nordström-Vaidya (AdS-RN-Vaidya) geometry, we extract a thermalization time of the medium with a non-zero chemical potential. In addition, we study the falling string as the holographic dual of a virtual gluon in the AdS-RN-Vaidya spacetime. The stopping distance of the massless particle representi…
We describe the application of pseudo-spectral methods to problems of holographic thermal quenches of relevant couplings in strongly coupled gauge theories. We focus on quenches of a fermionic mass term in a strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma, and the subsequent equilibration of the system. From the dual gravitational perspective, we study the gravitational collapse of a massive scalar field in asymptotically anti-de Sitter geometry with a prescribed boundary condition for its non-normalizable mode. Access to the full background geometry of the gravitational collapse allows …
Analyses of thermal diffusivity data on complex insulators and on strongly correlated electron systems hosted in similar complex crystal structures suggest that quantum chaos is a good description for thermalization processes in these systems, particularly in the high temperature regime where the many phonon bands and their interactions dominate the thermal transport. Here we observe that for these systems diffusive thermal transport is controlled by a universal Planckian time scale $τ\sim \hbar/k_BT$, and a unique velocity $v_E$. Specifically, $v_E \approx v_{ph} $ for complex insulators, and…
We study holographic thermalization in spacetimes with a chemical potential and a non-trivial dilaton field. Three non-local observables are used to probe the whole process and investigate the effect of the ratio of the chemical potential over temperature $χ$ and the dilaton-Maxwell coupling constant $α$. It is found that the saturation time is not always a monotonically increasing function of $χ$, the situation depends on $α$. When $0 \leqα\leq 1$, larger $χ$ yields longer saturation time, while for $α>1$, the situation becomes more complex. More interesting, we found that although $α$ indeed…
We study the holographic entanglement entropy in a homogeneous falling shell background, which is dual to the strongly coupled field theory following a global quench. For d=2 conformal field theories, it is known that the entropy has a linear growth regime if the scale of the entangling region is large. In addition, the growth rate approaches a constant when the scale increases. We demonstrate analytically that this behavior is directly related to the part of minimal area surface probing the interior of apparent horizons in the bulk, as well as the mutual information between two disjoint recta…
The universal nature of black hole collapse in asymptotically $AdS_3$ gravitational theories suggests that its holographic dual process, thermalization, should similarly be fixed by the universal features of 2d CFT with large central charge $c$. It is known that non-equilibrium states with scaling dimensions of order $c$ can be sorted into states that eventually thermalize and those that fail to do so. By proving an equivalence between bounded Virasoro coadjoint orbits and certain (in)stability intervals of Hill's equation it is shown that a state that fails to thermalize can be promoted to a …
We initiate a systematic study of high energy matrix elements of local operators in 2d CFT. Knowledge of these is required in order to determine whether the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) can hold in such theories. Most high energy states are high level Virasoro descendants, and by employing an oscillator representation of the Virasoro algebra we develop an efficient method for computing matrix elements of primary operators in such states. In parameter regimes where we expect (e.g. from AdS/CFT intuition) thermalization to occur, we observe striking patterns in the matrix elements:…
Heavy-ion collisions at BNL's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and CERN's Large Hadron Collider provide strong evidence for the formation of a quark-gluon plasma, with temperatures extracted from relativistic viscous hydrodynamic simulations shown to be well above the transition temperature from hadron matter. How the strongly correlated quark-gluon matter forms in a heavy-ion collision, its properties off-equilibrium, and the thermalization process in the plasma, are outstanding problems in QCD. We review here the theoretical progress in this field in weak coupling QCD effective field theories…
Gravitational falling in AdS has two characteristic properties \cite{ohsin}: i) A thick shell becomes a thin shell. ii) Any shape become spherical. Such focusing character of AdS, for the collapse of dusts, leads to the rapid thermalization mechanism in strongly interacting system. For the collapse of a wave, it explains the cascade of energy to UV through repeated bounces, which has been extensively discussed in recent numerical works. Therefore the focusing is the physical mechanism of instability of AdS. Such sharp contrast between the dust and wave in collapse, together with the experiment…
Onset of thermalization of q-deformed SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on a trapped-ion quantum computer
Keio University School of Medicine（庆应义塾大学医学院）；RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS)（理化学研究所跨学科理论与数学科学中心）；The University of Tokyo（东京大学）；International Center for Elementary Particle Physics（elementary粒子物理国际中心）；Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学汤川理论物理研究所）
Dynamical evolution of thin shells composed by different kinds of degrees of freedom collapsing within asymptotically AdS spaces is explored with the aim of investigating models of holographic thermalization of strongly coupled systems. From the quantum field theory point of view this corresponds to considering different thermal quenches. We carry out a general study of the thermalization time scale using different parameters and space-time dimensions, by calculating renormalized space-like geodesic lengths and rectangular minimal area surfaces as extended probes of thermalization, which are d…
We investigate thermalization process of boosted charged AdS black holes in the Einstein-Maxwell system in the presence of an ionic lattice formed by spatially varying chemical potential. We calculate perturbations of the black holes by the lattice and investigate how the momentum relaxation occurs through umklapp scattering. In the WKB approximation, both of the momentum relaxation rate and entropy production rate are analytically obtained and the first law of black holes is derived in the irreversible process. Interestingly, both the analytical and numerical calculations show that the moment…
