Energy momentum tensor correlators in hot Yang-Mills theory: holography confronts lattice and perturbation theory

TL;DR

This paper uses holography to study energy momentum tensor correlators in hot Yang-Mills theory, comparing results with lattice and perturbative calculations, and finds holography aligns well with lattice data.

Contribution

It provides holographic predictions for correlators in strongly coupled Yang-Mills theory and compares them with existing lattice and perturbative results, highlighting areas of agreement.

Findings

Lattice data favors holographic predictions over perturbative results in the bulk channel.

Holographic model accurately reproduces spectral functions at nonzero temperature.

Comparison shows holography can effectively describe strongly coupled gauge theories.

Abstract

We investigate the behavior of energy momentum tensor correlators in strongly coupled large-N_c Yang-Mills theory at nonzero temperature, working within the Improved Holographic QCD model. In particular, we determine the spectral functions and corresponding imaginary time correlators in the bulk and shear channels, and compare the results to recent perturbative and lattice calculations where available. For the bulk channel imaginary time correlator, for which all three results exist, lattice data is seen to favor the holographic prediction over the perturbative one over a wide range of temperatures.