Towards Collisions of Inhomogeneous Shockwaves in AdS

TL;DR

This paper presents a numerical study of inhomogeneous shockwave collisions in AdS spacetime, advancing holographic modeling of plasma thermalization relevant to heavy ion collisions.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed simulation of inhomogeneous shockwave collisions in AdS, exploring their evolution and hydrodynamization in holographic duals.

Findings

Inhomogeneities tend to become hydrodynamical early or simultaneously with the background.

Inhomogeneities decay slowly but still reach hydrodynamical behavior.

Results improve understanding of thermalization in strongly coupled plasmas.

Abstract

We perform a numerical simulation of the evolution of inhomogeneities with transverse profile in a collision of gravitational shockwaves in asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetime. This constitutes a step closer towards an accurate holographic description of the thermalization of a strongly coupled plasma, which can model the dynamics of heavy ion collisions. The results indicate that the considered inhomogeneities typically become hydrodynamical earlier or at the same moment when hydrodynamics applies to the background, even though they decay slowly.