The high momentum behavior of a quark wake

TL;DR

This paper uses AdS/CFT duality and a WKB approximation to analytically study the high momentum behavior of the color field around a moving quark in N=4 SYM plasma, revealing a fireball-like near-quark structure.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical WKB-based method to evaluate the high momentum behavior of quark-induced color fields in strongly coupled plasma.

Findings

Identifies a fireball-like behavior near the quark

Provides an analytical approach extendable to other setups

Confirms predictions related to heavy ion collisions

Abstract

Using the AdS/CFT duality, we analytically evaluate the high momentum (or short distance) behavior of the color field strength due to a moving quark in an N=4 SYM plasma. We find a fireball-like behavior in the near quark vicinity as predicted in the literature on general grounds, in the context of heavy ion collisions. Our approach to analytically solving the problem is based on a WKB approximation which may be extended to other setups as well.