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Dissipation from a heavy quark moving through N=4 super-Yang-Mills plasma

Joshua J. Friess, Steven S. Gubser, Georgios Michalogiorgakis

TL;DR

The paper tackles how a heavy quark moving through a strongly coupled N=4 SYM plasma dissipates energy by examining the gauge-field wake it generates. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, the authors compute the dilaton perturbation due to a trailing string in AdS5–Schwarzschild and extract the boundary VEV ⟨Tr F^2⟩ after subtracting the near-field. The resulting Fourier-space profile reveals a directional wake with substantial high-momentum content, indicating dissipation involves large-momentum gauge fields rather than solely hydrodynamic modes. While offering nonperturbative insights potentially relevant to jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions, the work also notes caveats in directly mapping to QCD and energy flow, and points to the need for ⟨T_{μν}⟩ calculations for a complete picture.

Abstract

Using AdS/CFT, we compute the Fourier space profile of <tr F^2> generated by a heavy quark moving through a thermal plasma of strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory. We find evidence of a wake whose description includes gauge fields with large momenta. We comment on the possible relevance of our results to relativistic heavy ion collisions.

Dissipation from a heavy quark moving through N=4 super-Yang-Mills plasma

TL;DR

The paper tackles how a heavy quark moving through a strongly coupled N=4 SYM plasma dissipates energy by examining the gauge-field wake it generates. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, the authors compute the dilaton perturbation due to a trailing string in AdS5–Schwarzschild and extract the boundary VEV ⟨Tr F^2⟩ after subtracting the near-field. The resulting Fourier-space profile reveals a directional wake with substantial high-momentum content, indicating dissipation involves large-momentum gauge fields rather than solely hydrodynamic modes. While offering nonperturbative insights potentially relevant to jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions, the work also notes caveats in directly mapping to QCD and energy flow, and points to the need for ⟨T_{μν}⟩ calculations for a complete picture.

Abstract

Using AdS/CFT, we compute the Fourier space profile of <tr F^2> generated by a heavy quark moving through a thermal plasma of strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory. We find evidence of a wake whose description includes gauge fields with large momenta. We comment on the possible relevance of our results to relativistic heavy ion collisions.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 4 sections, 28 equations, 2 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Dilaton perturbations
  3. Numerical algorithms and results
  4. Discussion

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Contour plots of the real part and minus the imaginary part of $B(K_1,K_\perp)$ for several values of $v$. The near field contribution (\ref{['FoundBKagain']}) has been subtracted. $B(K_1,K_\perp)$ is proportional to the $K$-th Fourier mode of $\langle {\cal O}_{F^2} \rangle$: see (\ref{['GotO']}). In each plot, the white region is closest to zero, and the black region is the most positive.
  • Figure 2: The absolute value of $B(K_1,K_\perp)$ with and without the phase space factor $K_\perp$. The near field contribution (\ref{['FoundBKagain']}) has been subtracted. The green dot is the recoil energy of a thermal gluon: see (\ref{['TGRE']}). The dashed red lines indicate the direction in which $K_\perp |B(K_1,K_\perp)|$ is largest: see the discussion around (\ref{['ThetaTable']}). In each plot, the white region is closest to zero, and the black region is the most positive.