Thermalization of Holographic Excited States

TL;DR

This paper develops a holographic framework to analyze the thermalization process of excited states in quantum field theories, utilizing complex-time paths and boundary conditions to isolate excited state contributions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel real-time holographic approach based on Schwinger-Keldysh paths to study thermalization of excited states, with explicit prescriptions for computations in large conformal dimensions.

Findings

Boundary conditions can exclude modes in initial states.

Explicit geodesic-based computation methods are provided.

Framework applies to theories on compact manifolds.

Abstract

We propose a real time holographic framework to study thermalization processes of a family of QFT excited states. The construction builds on Skenderis-van Rees's holographic duals to QFT Schwinger-Keldysh complex-time ordered paths. Thermalization is explored choosing a set of observables $F_n$ which essentially isolate the excited state contribution. Focusing on theories defined on compact manifolds and with excited states defined in terms of Euclidean path integrals, we identify boundary conditions that allow to avoid any number of modes in the initial field state. In the large conformal dimensions regime, we give precise prescriptions on how to compute the observables in terms of bulk geodesics.