1307.1487 (V. Balasubramanian et al.)

Inhomogeneous Thermalization in Strongly Coupled Field Theories    [PDF]

V. Balasubramanian, A. Bernamonti, J. de Boer, B. Craps, L. Franti, F. Galli, E. Keski-Vakkuri, B. Müller, A. Schäfer

To describe theoretically the creation and evolution of the quark-gluon plasma, one typically employs three ingredients: a model for the initial state, non-hydrodynamic early time evolution, and hydrodynamics. In this paper we study the non-hydrodynamic early time evolution using the AdS/CFT correspondence in the presence of inhomogeneities. We find that the AdS description of the early time evolution is well-matched by free streaming, and that the stress tensor approaches that of second order hydrodynamics near the end of the early time interval where our analytic computations are reliable. Our techniques may also be useful for the study of far-from-equilibrium strongly coupled systems in other areas of physics.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.1487