Holographic thermalization of charged operators

TL;DR

This paper investigates holographic thermalization in charged AdS spacetimes, showing how charge dynamics affect energy conditions and the thermalization process of charged operators, with implications for UV and IR degrees of freedom.

Contribution

It analyzes the impact of charge variation during gravitational collapse on energy conditions and the thermalization of charged operators in holography.

Findings

Energy conditions hold when charge decreases during collapse.

Increasing charge leads to violations of energy conditions in IR.

Thermalization time increases with operator charge and spatial dimension.

Abstract

We study a light-like charged collapsing shell in AdS-Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime, investigating whether the corresponding Vaidya metric is supported by matter that satisfies the null energy condition. We find that, if the absolute value of the charge decreases during the collapse, energy conditions are fulfilled everywhere in spacetime. On the other hand, if the absolute value of the charge increases, the metric does not satisfy energy conditions in the IR region. Therefore, from the gauge/gravity perspective, this last case is only useful to study the thermalization of the UV degrees of freedom. For all these geometries, we probe the thermalization process with two point correlators of charged operators, finding that the thermalization time grows with the charge of the operator, as well as with the dimension of space.