Holographic Collisions across a Phase Transition
Maximilian Attems1,2, Yago Bea2, Jorge Casalderrey-Solana2,3
1Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías (IGFAE), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Galicia, Spain.
Physical Review Letters
|January 13, 2019
Summary
Holography reveals that relativistic collisions deposit energy into a long-lived blob, regardless of the phase transition type. Second-order hydrodynamics accurately describes this energy deposition near the critical point.
Area of Science:
- High-energy physics
- Quantum field theory
- Gravitational holography
Background:
- Strongly coupled gauge theories exhibit thermal phase transitions.
- The nature of these transitions (first-order, second-order, crossover) impacts collision dynamics.
- Understanding energy deposition in relativistic collisions is crucial for probing these theories.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze relativistic collisions in strongly coupled gauge theories using holography.
- To investigate the role of the phase transition's order on collision outcomes.
- To compare the descriptive power of different hydrodynamic models.
Main Methods:
- Holographic principle to connect gauge theories to gravitational systems.
- Analysis of gravitational shock wave collisions in dual geometries.
- Extraction of the gauge theory stress tensor from holographic data.
- Comparison with second-order and Müller-Israel-Stewart hydrodynamics.
Main Results:
- Energy deposition in relativistic collisions forms a long-lived, quasistatic blob at midrapidity, irrespective of the transition order.
- This energy deposition is accurately described by second-order hydrodynamics including spatial gradients.
- Müller-Israel-Stewart hydrodynamics provides a less accurate description.
Conclusions:
- The observed energy deposition pattern is robust across different phase transition types near the critical point.
- Second-order hydrodynamics offers a successful framework for describing collision dynamics in these strongly coupled systems.
- Findings have implications for searching for the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) critical point.
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