Authors

Shu Lin

Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Martin Rocek | Benitez-Silva, Hugo | Tom Hemmick | Montgomery, Mark | Dimitri Kharzeev.

Date

2010-05-01

Keywords

AdS/CFT, Heavy Ion Collisions | Physics, Nuclear -- Physics, Elementary Particles and High Energy

Department

Department of Physics

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/72587

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

It is now believed that heavy ion collisions have produced a state of strongly coupled quark gluon plasma. The strong coupling of the fields make the perturbative field theoretical calculation less reliable. The gauge/gravity duality has recently emerged as a powerful tool allowing us to study the dynamics of the gauge fields at strong coupling. Many novel features of strongly coupled gauge fields have been revealed in recent studies via the duality. In this dissertation, I will focus on an important aspect in heavy ion collisions: the equilibration of matter and formation of quark gluon plasma.While linearized Einstein equation encodes dynamics near equilibrium, e.g quasi-normal mode, the thermalization of matter far from equilibrium necessarilly involves strong gravity behavior. I will first use a gravitational collapse model, which is dual to thermalization process of the quark gluon plasma. The spectral densities of stress energy tensor are studied and found to show universal behavior as the thermalization is approached. Then I will also describe a model of gravitational shock wave collision, which mimics the relativistic nucleus collisions. The shock wave model allows us to find the apparent horizon, its area giving a lower bound to the entropy production as a function of the impact parameter. An critical impact parameter is observed, beyond which no thermalization is possible. I will finally comment on the equivalence between the collisions of sourced shock wave and sourceless shock wave.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.