A Gravity Dual of RHIC Collisions

TL;DR

This paper models heavy-ion collisions using AdS/CFT, depicting the process as a gravitational collapse in AdS space that results in a black hole representing the expanding quark-gluon plasma, with novel cooling dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a gravity dual framework for heavy-ion collisions, illustrating the entire process from initial scattering to fireball freeze-out within a holographic model.

Findings

The model describes the formation of a black hole as a dual to the expanding fireball.

Cooling rates of the fireball are faster than traditional Bjorken cooling.

The transition to confinement is modeled via a Hawking-Page transition.

Abstract

In the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence we discuss the gravity dual of a heavy-ion-like collision in a variant of ${\cal N}=4$ SYM. We provide a gravity dual picture of the entire process using a model where the scattering process creates initially a holographic shower in bulk AdS. The subsequent gravitational fall leads to a moving black hole that is gravity dual to the expanding and cooling heavy-ion fireball. The front of the fireball cools at the rate of $1/\tau$, while the core cools as $1/\sqrt{\tau}$ from a cosmological-like argument. The cooling is faster than Bjorken cooling. The fireball freezes when the dual black hole background is replaced by a confining background through the Hawking-Page transition.