Off-center collisions in AdS_5 with applications to multiplicity estimates in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper analytically investigates off-center shock wave collisions in AdS_5 to estimate entropy production, providing insights relevant to heavy-ion collision multiplicity and incorporating QCD-like effects.

Contribution

It presents an analytic solution for the shape of trapped surfaces in off-center AdS_5 shock collisions and explores their implications for entropy estimates in heavy-ion physics.

Findings

Derived an analytic expression for trapped surface shape.

Estimated lower bounds on entropy production.

Compared results with heavy-ion collision multiplicity data.

Abstract

We study the trapped surface produced by an off-center collision of light-like, point-sourced shock waves in anti-de Sitter space. We find an analytic expression for the shape of the trapped surface in the limit where the energy of the shock waves is large and the impact parameter is not too large. We use the area of the trapped surface to estimate a lower bound on the entropy produced in the collision. We compare our results to particle multiplicity measurements in heavy-ion collisions as interpreted through the Glauber model. In an attempt to roughly simulate the effects of asymptotic freedom and confinement in quantum chromodynamics, we also consider the effects of slicing off parts of anti-de Sitter space.