Universal stress-tensor correlation functions of strongly coupled conformal fluids

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the universality of stress-tensor correlation functions in strongly coupled conformal fluids with gravitational duals, highlighting their potential to probe the quark-gluon plasma and its universality class.

Contribution

It extends the universality of graviton multi-point functions to stress-tensor correlations in conformal fluids via gauge-gravity duality, including leading Einstein gravity corrections.

Findings

Stress-tensor correlations are universal in conformal fluids with gravitational duals.

Measuring stress-energy correlations can test the universality and gravitational duality of quark-gluon plasma.

Potential to identify the universality class of the plasma through correlation measurements.

Abstract

We have shown in two accompanying papers that, for Einstein gravity, the graviton multi-point functions are universal in a particular kinematic region and depend only on the (generalized) Mandelstam variable s. The effects of the leading corrections to Einstein gravity were shown to be similarly universal, inducing a specific difference in the angular dependence. Here we show, relying on the gauge-gravity duality, that the stress-tensor correlation functions of conformal fluids whose gravitational dual is either Einstein gravity or its leading correction are also universal. We discuss the possible significance of these results to multi-particle correlations in heavy-ion collisions. We show that, to test our ideas, the stress-energy correlation functions have to measured rather than the standard multiplicity correlation functions. We then discuss schematically how stress-energy correlations in heavy-ion collisions can be used to test our findings. We argue that, if these correlations can be measured precisely enough, they will provide a unique way to probe the existence of a gravitational dual to the quark-gluon plasma and to determine its universality class.