Universal behaviour, transients and attractors in supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates universal behaviors and transient effects in the late-time dynamics of supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma, linking numerical simulations to theoretical models and identifying key quasinormal modes.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of transient corrections in strongly coupled plasma, connecting numerical results to quasinormal modes and the hydrodynamic attractor.

Findings

Transient effects match quasinormal modes

Universal behavior persists far from equilibrium

Hydrodynamic attractor identified and supported

Abstract

Numerical simulations of expanding plasma based on the AdS/CFT correspondence as well as kinetic theory and hydrodynamic models strongly suggest that some observables exhibit universal behaviour even when the system is not close to local equilibrium. This leading behaviour is expected to be corrected by transient, exponentially decaying contributions which carry information about the initial state. Focusing on late times, when the system is already in the hydrodynamic regime, we analyse numerical solutions describing expanding plasma of strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and identify these transient effects, matching them in a quantitative way to leading trans-series corrections corresponding to least-damped quasinormal modes of AdS black branes. In the process we offer additional evidence supporting the recent identification of the Borel sum of the hydrodynamic gradient expansion with the far-from-equilibrium attractor in this system.