Expanding plasmas and quasinormal modes of anti-de Sitter black holes

TL;DR

This paper calculates the quasinormal modes of AdS_5-Schwarzschild black holes and uses them to model the expansion of a finite, anisotropic thermal plasma, drawing parallels with quark-gluon plasma behavior in heavy ion collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to relate gravitational quasinormal modes to the dynamics of expanding thermal plasmas in holography, providing new insights into plasma evolution.

Findings

Estimated elliptic flow coefficient matches experimental data.

Determined thermalization time scales for the plasma.

Showed how anisotropic expansion affects quasinormal mode spectra.

Abstract

We compute the gravitational quasinormal modes of the global AdS_5-Schwarzschild solution. We show how to use the holographic dual of these modes to describe a thermal plasma of finite extent expanding in a slightly anisotropic fashion. We compare these flows with the behavior of quark-gluon plasmas produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions by estimating the elliptic flow coefficient and the thermalization time.