Entropy production in collisions of gravitational shock waves and of heavy ions

TL;DR

This paper calculates the entropy produced in gravitational shock wave collisions in AdS space and compares it to heavy ion collision data, exploring conformal symmetry remnants relevant to real-world experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a method to estimate entropy from shock wave collisions in AdS and discusses the potential relevance of conformal symmetry in heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Lower bound on entropy production in gravitational shock wave collisions.

Comparison of gravitational entropy estimates with heavy ion collision data.

Identification of conformal symmetry remnants in AdS shock wave models.

Abstract

We calculate the area of a marginally trapped surface formed by a head-on collision of gravitational shock waves in AdS_D. We use this to obtain a lower bound on the entropy produced after the collision. A comparison to entropy production in heavy ion collisions is included. We also discuss an O(D-2) remnant of conformal symmetry which is present in a class of gravitational shock wave collisions in AdS_D and which might be approximately realized (with D=5) in central heavy-ion collisions.