Holographic Collisions Research Articles

Holographic collisions in large D effective theory

We study collisions of Gaussian mass-density blobs in a holographic plasma, using a large D effective theory, as a model for holographic shockwave collisions. The simplicity of the effective theory allows us to perform the first 4+1 collisions in Einstein-Maxwell theory, which are dual to collisions of matter with non-zero baryonic number. We explore several collision scenarios with different blob shapes, impact parameters and charge values and find that collisions with impact parameter below the transverse width of the blobs are equivalent under rescaling. We also observe that charge weakly affects the rest of quantities. Finally, we study the entropy generated during collisions, both by charge diffusion and viscous dissipation. Multiple stages of linear entropy growth are identified, whose rates are not independent of the initial conditions.

Holographic Collisions across a Phase Transition.

We use holography to analyze relativistic collisions in a one-parameter family of strongly coupled gauge theories with thermal phase transitions. For a critical value of the parameter, the transition is second order, for subcritical values it is first order, and for supercritical values it a smooth crossover. We extract the gauge theory stress tensor from collisions of gravitational shock waves on the dual geometries. Regardless of the nature of the transition, for values of the parameter close to the critical value, almost all the energy of the projectiles is deposited into a long-lived, quasistatic blob of energy at midrapidity. This configuration is well described by the constitutive relations of second-order hydrodynamics that include all second-order gradients that are purely spatial in the local rest frame. In contrast, a Müller-Israel-Stewart-type formulation of hydrodynamics fails to provide a good description. We discuss possible implications for searches of the QCD critical point.

Holographic collisions in non-conformal theories

We numerically simulate gravitational shock wave collisions in a holographic model dual to a non-conformal four-dimensional gauge theory. We find two novel effects associated to the non-zero bulk viscosity of the resulting plasma. First, the hydrodynamization time increases. Second, if the bulk viscosity is large enough then the plasma becomes well described by hydrodynamics before the energy density and the average pressure begin to obey the equilibrium equation of state. We discuss implications for the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy ion collision experiments.

Holography, Hydrodynamization and Heavy-ion Collisions

In the course of the past several years holography has emerged as an ab initio tool in exploring strongly-time-dependent phenomena in gauge theories. These lecture notes overview recent developments in this area driven by phenomenological questions concerning applicability of hydrodynamics (hydrodynamization) under extreme conditions occurring in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. The topics include hydrodynamization time scale, holographic collisions, as well as hydrodynamization from the point of view of the asymptotic character of the hydrodynamic gradient expansion. The emphasis is put on concepts rather than calculational techniques and a particular attention is devoted to present these developments in the context of the most recent advances and some of the open problems.

Holographic collisions in confining theories

We study the gravitational dual of a high-energy collision in a confining gauge theory. We consider a linearized approach in which two point particles traveling in an AdS-soliton background suddenly collide to form an object at rest (presumably a black hole for large enough center-of-mass energies). The resulting radiation exhibits the features expected in a theory with a mass gap: late-time power law tails of the form t^(-3/2), the failure of Huygens' principle and distortion of the wave pattern as it propagates. The energy spectrum is exponentially suppressed for frequencies smaller than the gauge theory mass gap. Consequently, we observe no memory effect in the gravitational waveforms. At larger frequencies the spectrum has an upward-stairway structure, which corresponds to the excitation of the tower of massive states in the confining gauge theory. We discuss the importance of phenomenological cutoffs to regularize the divergent spectrum, and the aspects of the full non-linear collision that are expected to be captured by our approach.