Holography of Radiation and Jet Quenching

TL;DR

This paper explores the holographic duality of radiation propagation and jet quenching in strongly coupled gauge theories, revealing how radiation stalls near black hole horizons at finite temperature, with implications for heavy ion collision experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic model describing radiation propagation and jet quenching at finite temperature using the radius/scale duality in AdS/CFT, highlighting the stalling of radiation near the horizon.

Findings

Radiation stalls at a distance of 1/πT from the black hole horizon.

Holographic interpretation of radiation in-fall analogous to gravitational in-fall.

Implication that jets cannot travel beyond 1/3 fm at RHIC energies.

Abstract

We study the non-linear propagation of radiation in {\cal N=4} SYM at zero and finite temperature using the refined radius/scale duality in AdS/CFT. We argue that a pulse radiation by a quark at the boundary should be described holographically by a "point like object" passing through the center of the AdS bulk. We find that at finite temperature, the radiation stalls at a distance of $1/\pi T$ with a natural geometric and holographic interpretation. Indeed, the stalling is the holographic analogue of the gravitational in-fall of light towards the black hole in the bulk. We suggest that these results are relevant for jet quenching by a strongly coupled quark-gluon liquid as currently probed in heavy ion colliders at RHIC. In particular, colored jets cannot make it beyond 1/3 fm at RHIC whatever their energy.