Time-dependent AdS/CFT correspondence and the Quark-Gluon plasma

Abstract

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 intricate theoretical challenge. As a quite unique modern tool to relate these dynamical features to a microscopic gauge field theory at strong coupling, time-dependent realizations of the AdS/CFT correspondence provide a fruitful way to study these properties in a realistic kinematic configuration. Relating a 4-dimensional Yang-Mills gauge theory with four supersymmetries (which is a conformal field theory, CFT) with gravity in Anti-de Sitter space in five dimensions (AdS), the AdS/CFT correspondence provides a useful "laboratory" to study yet unknown strong coupling properties of QCD. Besides the interest of revealing new aspects of the AdS/CFT correspondence in a dynamical set-up, the application to plasma formation leads to non trivial theoretical properties, as we will discuss in the lectures. The highlights of the present lectures are: 1. Emergence of an (almost) perfect hydrodynamic fluid at late proper-times after the collision. 2. Duality between an expanding 4-dimensional plasma and a black hole moving radially in the bulk. 3. Intimate link between conformal hydrodynamics and Einstein's equations in the asymptotically AdS space. 4. Possibility of studying the far-from-equilibrium stage of a gauge field theory at early collisional proper-times.

27 pages, 8 figures, based on the lectures given by R.P. at the 2010 Cargese Summer School (June 21-July 3), to appear in the proceedings. References added and corrected relaxation time eq. (56)

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