Holographic thermalization with radial flow

TL;DR

This paper presents a numerical simulation of the early formation of a radially expanding quark-gluon plasma using gauge/gravity duality, showing rapid local equilibrium and implications for hydrodynamic modeling.

Contribution

It provides a full numerical solution for the far-from-equilibrium evolution of a radially expanding plasma in holography, advancing understanding of thermalization in heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Rapid local equilibrium achieved in the plasma

Numerical solution models early-stage expansion

Implications for hydrodynamic simulations in collisions

Abstract

Recently, a lot of effort has been put into describing the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma using the gauge/gravity duality. In this context we here present a full numerical solution of the early far-from-equilibrium formation of the plasma, which is expanding radially in the transverse plane and is boost invariant along the collision axis. This can model the early stage of a head-on relativistic heavy ion collision. The resulting momentum distribution quickly reaches local equilibrium, after which they can be evolved using ordinary hydrodynamics. We comment on general implications for these hydrodynamic simulations, both for central and non-central collisions, and including fluctuations in the initial state.