Bright branes for strongly coupled plasmas

TL;DR

This paper employs holographic methods to analyze photon production in strongly coupled quark-gluon plasmas, revealing spectral features influenced by quark mass and discussing experimental implications.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic approach to compute electromagnetic spectral functions in strongly coupled plasmas with finite quark mass.

Findings

Spectral functions show distinctive structures depending on photon frequency and quark mass.

Results are valid at leading order in electromagnetic coupling, non-perturbative in SU(Nc) interactions.

Implications for interpreting heavy ion collision experiment data.

Abstract

We use holographic techniques to study photon production in a class of finite temperature, strongly coupled, large-Nc SU(Nc) quark-gluon plasmas with Nf << Nc quark flavours. Our results are valid to leading order in the electromagnetic coupling constant but non-perturbatively in the SU(Nc) interactions. The spectral function of electromagnetic currents and other related observables exhibit an interesting structure as a function of the photon frequency and the quark mass. We discuss possible implications for heavy ion collision experiments.