Electric Field Quench, Equilibration and Universal Behavior

TL;DR

This paper investigates how strongly coupled gauge theories respond to electric field quenches using AdS/CFT, revealing universal behaviors in equilibration times for fast quenches across different dimensions.

Contribution

It demonstrates the universal behavior of equilibration times in strongly coupled gauge theories under electric field quenches, extending findings across various dimensions.

Findings

Rescaled equilibration time decreases with increasing transition time.

Universal behavior observed for fast quenches regardless of final electric field value.

Universalization process confirmed across different dimensional systems.

Abstract

We study electric field quench in N=2 strongly coupled gauge theory, using the AdS/CFT correspondence. To do so, we consider the aforementioned system which is subjected to a time-dependent electric field indicating an out of equilibrium system. Defining the equilibration time t_{eq}, at which the system relaxes to its final equilibrium state after injecting the energy, we find that the rescaled equilibriation time k^{-1}t_{eq} decreases as the transition time k increases. Therefore, we expect that for sufficiently large transition time, k ->infinity, the relaxation of the system to its final equilibrium can be an adiabatic process. On the other hand, we observe a universal behavior for the fast quenches, k << 1, meaning that the rescaled equilibration time does not depend on the final value of the time-dependent electric field. Our calculations generalized to systems in various dimensions also confirm universalization process which seems to be a typical feature of all strongly coupled gauge theories that admit a gravitational dual.