Gauge/String Duality, Hot QCD and Heavy Ion Collisions

Jorge Casalderrey-Solana, Hong Liu, David Mateos, Krishna Rajagopal, Urs Achim Wiedemann

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781107022461
• eBook ISBN:
  9781107776913
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Mathematical & Computational Physics

Heavy ion collision experiments recreating the quark-gluon plasma that filled the microseconds-old universe have established that it is a nearly perfect liquid that flows with such minimal dissipation that it cannot be seen as made of particles. String theory provides a powerful toolbox for studying matter with such properties. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to gauge/string duality and its applications to the study of the thermal and transport properties of quark-gluon plasma, the dynamics of how it forms, the hydrodynamics of how it flows, and its response to probes including jets and quarkonium mesons. Calculations are discussed in the context of data from RHIC and LHC and results from finite temperature lattice QCD. The book is an ideal reference for students and researchers in string theory, quantum field theory, quantum many-body physics, heavy ion physics and lattice QCD.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• 1 Opening remarks
• 2 A heavy ion phenomenology primer
• 3 Results from lattice QCD at nonzero temperature
• 4 Introducing the gauge/string duality
• 5 A duality toolbox
• 6 Bulk properties of strongly coupled plasma
• 7 From hydrodynamics to far-from-equilibrium dynamics
• 8 Probing strongly coupled plasma
• 9 Quarkonium mesons in strongly coupled plasma
• 10 Concluding remarks and outlook
• Appendix A Green–Kubo formula for transport coefficients
• Appendix B Hawking temperature of a general black brane metric
• Appendix C Holographic renormalization, one-point functions, and a two-point function
• Appendix D Computation of the holographic stress tensor
• References
• Index