On the critical condition in gravitational shock wave collision and heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper derives a critical condition for matter equilibration in heavy ion collisions using holographic duality, linking gravitational shock wave interactions in AdS space to gauge theory dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel critical condition for matter equilibration in heavy ion collisions based on gravitational shock wave analysis in AdS space.

Findings

Critical condition is insensitive to source depth near the boundary.

Breakdown of perturbative expansion signals black hole formation.

Non-perturbative effects are necessary for accurate description.

Abstract

In this paper, we derived a critical condition for matter equilibration in heavy ion collisions using a holographic approach. A gravitational shock waves with infinite transverse extension is used to model infinite nucleus. We constructed the trapped surface in the collision of two asymmetric planar shock waves with sources at different depth in the bulk AdS and formulated a critical condition for matter equilibration in collision of "nucleus" in the dual gauge theory. We found the critical condition is insensitive to the depth of the source closer to the AdS boundary. To understand the origin of the critical condition, we computed the Next to Leading Order stress tensor in the boundary field theory due to the interaction of the nucleus and found the critical condition corresponds to the breaking down of the perturbative expansion. We indeed expect non-perturbative effects be needed to describe black hole formation.