Holography of Radiation and Jet Quenching

TL;DR

This work develops a holographic description of non-linear radiation in ${\mathcal N}=4$ SYM using a refined AdS/CFT radius/scale duality. It argues that boundary radiation is captured by a point-like bulk object traversing the AdS center, and at finite temperature the radiation stalls at $L_c = 1/(\pi T)$, independent of energy, due to bulk infall toward the black hole horizon. A metric-independent point-sphere (MIPS) correspondence links bulk light propagation to boundary light fronts, enabling a simple boundary interpretation of radiation stopping as a strong-coupling opacity in a quark-gluon liquid. The findings suggest an energy-independent jet-quenching length of about 1/3 fm at RHIC and offer a principled framework for understanding jet suppression in a strongly coupled medium, while acknowledging limitations and avenues for extension to QCD-like theories.

Abstract

We study the non-linear propagation of radiation in {\cal N=4} SYM at zero and finite temperature using the refined radius/scale duality in AdS/CFT. We argue that a pulse radiation by a quark at the boundary should be described holographically by a "point like object" passing through the center of the AdS bulk. We find that at finite temperature, the radiation stalls at a distance of $1/πT$ with a natural geometric and holographic interpretation. Indeed, the stalling is the holographic analogue of the gravitational in-fall of light towards the black hole in the bulk. We suggest that these results are relevant for jet quenching by a strongly coupled quark-gluon liquid as currently probed in heavy ion colliders at RHIC. In particular, colored jets cannot make it beyond 1/3 fm at RHIC whatever their energy.