No Arabic abstract
We determine the energy it takes to move a test quark along a circle of radius L with angular frequency w through the strongly coupled plasma of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theory. We find that for most values of L and w the energy deposited by stirring the plasma in this way is governed either by the drag force acting on a test quark moving through the plasma in a straight line with speed v=Lw or by the energy radiated by a quark in circular motion in the absence of any plasma, whichever is larger. There is a continuous crossover from the drag-dominated regime to the radiation-dominated regime. In the crossover regime we find evidence for significant destructive interference between energy loss due to drag and that due to radiation as if in vacuum. The rotating quark thus serves as a model system in which the relative strength of, and interplay between, two different mechanisms of parton energy loss is accessible via a controlled classical gravity calculation. We close by speculating on the implications of our results for a quark that is moving through the plasma in a straight line while decelerating, although in this case the classical calculation breaks down at the same value of the deceleration at which the radiation-dominated regime sets in.
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 magnetic objects creating it? Do they play any important role in sQGP physics? Can we understand the AdS/CFT predictions, from the gauge theory side? Can they be tested experimentally? Can AdS/CFT duality help us understand rapid equilibration/entropy production? Can we work out a complete dynamical gravity dual to heavy ion collisions?
Based on a holographic model incorporating both chiral anomaly and gravitational anomaly, we study the effect of magneto-vortical coupling on transport properties of a strongly coupled plasma. The focus of present work is on the generation of a vector charge density and an axial current, as response to vorticity in a magnetized plasma. The transport coefficients parameterising the vector charge density and axial current are calculated both analytically (in the weak magnetic field limit) and also numerically (for general values of the magnetic field). We find the generation of vector charge receives both non-anomalous and anomalous contributions, with the non-anomalous contribution dominating in the limit of strong magnetic field and the anomalous contribution sensitive to both chiral anomaly and gravitational anomaly. On the contrary, we find the axial current is induced entirely due to the gravitational anomaly, thus we interpret the axial current generation as chiral vortical effect. The corresponding chiral vortical conductivity is found to be suppressed by the magnetic field. By Onsager relation, these transport coefficients are responsible for the generation of a thermal current due to a transverse electric field or a transverse axial magnetic field, which we call thermal Hall effect and thermal axial magnetic effect, respectively.
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 thermalization is first observed at short distances.
We use holography to investigate the process of homogeneous isotropization and thermalization in a strongly coupled $mathcal{N} = 4$ Super Yang-Mills plasma charged under a $U(1)$ subgroup of the global $SU(4)$ R-symmetry which features a critical point in its phase diagram. Isotropization dynamics at late times is affected by the critical point in agreement with the behavior of the characteristic relaxation time extracted from the analysis of the lowest non-hydrodynamic quasinormal mode in the $SO(3)$ quintuplet (external scalar) channel of the theory. In particular, the isotropization time may decrease or increase as the chemical potential increases depending on whether one is far or close enough to the critical point, respectively. On the other hand, the thermalization time associated with the equilibration of the scalar condensate, which happens only after the system has relaxed to a (nearly) isotropic state, is found to always increase with chemical potential in agreement with the characteristic relaxation time associated to the lowest non-hydrodynamic quasinormal mode in the $SO(3)$ singlet (dilaton) channel. These conclusions about the late dynamics of the system are robust in the sense that they hold for different initial conditions seeding the time evolution of the far-from-equilibrium plasma.
I use the holographic gauge/gravity duality to systematically calculate the jet quenching parameters in strongly coupled anisotropic plasmas in the presence of external magnetic fields. The magnetic field breaks down spatial rotation symmetry from $SO(3)$ to $SO(2)$, leading to the presence of multiple anisotropic jet quenching parameters, which are evaluated here in two quite different holographic settings. One of them corresponds to a top-down deformation of the strongly coupled $mathcal{N} = 4$ Super Yang-Mills plasma triggered by an external magnetic field, while the other one is a bottom-up Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton model of phenomenological relevance for high energy peripheral heavy ion collisions, since it is able to provide a quantitative description of $(2+1)$-flavors lattice QCD thermodynamics with physical quark masses at zero and nonzero magnetic fields. I find for both models an overall enhancement of all the anisotropic jet quenching parameters with increasing magnetic fields. Moreover, I also conclude that for both models transverse momentum broadening is larger in transverse directions than in the direction of the magnetic field. Since these conclusions are shown to hold for two rather different holographic setups at finite temperature and magnetic fields, they are suggested as fairly robust features of strongly coupled anisotropic magnetized plasmas.