Butterflies dragging the jets: on the chaotic nature of holographic QCD

TL;DR

This paper links quantum chaos and quark-gluon plasma in holography, showing that the relativistic drag force correction is determined by butterfly velocity, which can be experimentally inferred from jet quenching data.

Contribution

It establishes a novel connection between butterfly velocity and drag force correction in holographic QCD, robust against stringy effects and anisotropy.

Findings

Relativistic correction to drag force fixed by butterfly velocity.

Jet quenching parameter related to butterfly velocity and temperature.

Potential to experimentally reconstruct butterfly velocity from observables.

Abstract

In this Letter, we bring together two topics in the holographic correspondence - quantum chaos and quark-gluon plasma (QGP). We establish that the first relativistic correction to drag force experienced by a charge carrier moving through a thermal medium (for example, a quark in QGP) at a constant velocity is fixed by the butterfly velocity. Moreover, we show that this result is robust against stringy corrections and anisotropy. For the jet quenching parameter, we find that it is related to the butterfly velocity along the momentum broadening direction and temperature in the spirit of the ``Planckian bound''. This opens a way to the reconstruction of butterfly velocity of quark-gluon plasma and other strongly-coupled systems experimentally from rather simple observables.