Role of nonlocal probes of thermalization for a strongly interacting non-Abelian plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nonlocal boundary probes like two-point functions and Wilson loops reveal the thermalization process of a strongly interacting non-Abelian plasma using holographic methods, highlighting the dependence on probe size.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic approach to study the thermalization of a non-Abelian plasma via nonlocal boundary probes, emphasizing the role of boundary sourcing in driving far-from-equilibrium dynamics.

Findings

Thermalization begins at short distances for nonlocal probes.

The thermalization time depends on the size of the probes.

Boundary sourcing effectively drives the system far from equilibrium.

Abstract

We use a holographic method to investigate thermalization of a boost-invariant strongly interacting non-Abelian plasma. Boundary sourcing, a distorsion of the boundary metric, is employed to drive the system far from equilibrium. Thermalization is analyzed through nonlocal probes: the equal-time two-point correlation function of large conformal dimension operators in the boundary theory, and Wilson loops of different shapes. We study the dependence of the thermalization time on the size of the probes, and compare the results to the ones obtained using local observables: the onset of thermalization is first observed at short distances.