Gauge/gravity duality and near-equilibrium regime of strongly coupled thermal gauge theories
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Oxford Physics
Abstract
The focus of the proposed research is the intriguing connection between the physics of black holes and the properties of finite temperature gauge theories (gauge theories are the class of theories describing strong, weak and electromagnetic forces). This connection is known as the holographic gauge/gravity duality. The duality can be used as a tool to access the so called nonperturbative regime of gauge theories where other available theoretical methods are not effective. This is especially important for processes involving hot and dense nuclear matter out of thermal equilibrium i.e. precisely the conditions created in heavy ion collision experiments currently underway at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Experimental data strongly suggests that the matter in these collisions exists in the regime described by a nonperturbative gauge theory. In the absence of other viable approaches, the gauge/gravity duality remains the only source of theoretical insights in this field. Computing transport coefficients such as shear and bulk viscosity, thermal conductivity, diffusion constants in various models using gravity dual description of gauge theories is of great interest for phenomenological applications. Other non-equlibrium processes such as particle emission from the expanding quark-gluon plasma fireball can be treated in this approach as well. The proposed reasearch is supposed to accumulate theoretical information relevant for the analysis of currently available and future experimental data from RHIC and (in the near future) from the heavy ion experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Organisations
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom (Fellow, Lead Research Organisation)
- Washington University in St. Louis (Collaboration)
- CENTRA (Collaboration)
- California Institute of Technology, United States (Collaboration)
- Uni of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (Collaboration)
- Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (Collaboration)
Publications

Karch A
(2009)
Holographic quantum liquid.
in Physical review letters

Berti E
(2009)
Quasinormal modes of black holes and black branes
in Classical and Quantum Gravity

Starinets A
(2009)
Quasinormal spectrum and the black hole membrane paradigm
in Physics Letters B

Davison Richard A.
(2012)
Holographic zero sound at finite temperature
in PHYSICAL REVIEW D

Grozdanov S
(2015)
Zero-viscosity limit in a holographic Gauss-Bonnet liquid
in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics

Grozdanov S
(2015)
On the universal identity in second order hydrodynamics
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Description | A new formalism to treat higher order fluid dynamics has been developed. |
Exploitation Route | The formalism can be used to construct the full description of fluid dynamics (within derivative expansion), write down and check the dispersion relation for collective excitations in various substances including quark-gluon plasma and other strongly interacting liquids. |
Sectors | Education,Other |
URL | https://inspirehep.net/?ln=en |
Description | Holographic Quantum Liquids |
Organisation | University of Washington |
Department | Department of Physics |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Zero sound mode reminiscent of the collective mode known to exist in liquid Helium-3 has been discovered in a holographic model of quantum liquid. |
Collaborator Contribution | Joint publication |
Impact | ``Holographic Quantum Liquid,'' Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 051602 (2009); ``Zero Sound from Holography,'' [arXiv:0806.3796 [hep-th]]. |
Start Year | 2008 |
Description | Quasinormal modes of black holes and black branes |
Organisation | CENTRA |
Country | United States |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | The role of quasinormal modes in the gauge-gravity diality has been described in full detail. |
Collaborator Contribution | Joint publication |
Impact | ``Quasinormal modes of black holes and black branes,'' Class. Quant.Grav. 26, 163001 (2009). [arXiv:0905.2975 [gr-qc]]. |
Start Year | 2008 |
Description | Quasinormal modes of black holes and black branes |
Organisation | California Institute of Technology |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | The role of quasinormal modes in the gauge-gravity diality has been described in full detail. |
Collaborator Contribution | Joint publication |
Impact | ``Quasinormal modes of black holes and black branes,'' Class. Quant.Grav. 26, 163001 (2009). [arXiv:0905.2975 [gr-qc]]. |
Start Year | 2008 |
Description | Second-order hydrodynamics |
Organisation | University of Illinois |
Department | Department of Physics |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Joint publication:Investigation of the second-order (relativistic) hydrodynamics in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence had a significant impact on the field of heavy-ion physics. |
Collaborator Contribution | Joint publication |
Impact | ``Relativistic viscous hydrodynamics, conformal invariance, and holography,'' JHEP 0804, 100 (2008). [arXiv:0712.2451 [hep-th]]. |
Start Year | 2007 |
Description | Spectral functions |
Organisation | Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics |
Country | Canada |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Investigation of the spectral functions via gauge-gravity duality |
Collaborator Contribution | Joint publication |
Impact | ``Holographic spectral functions and diffusion constants for fundamental matter,'' JHEP 0711, 091 (2007). [arXiv:0706.0162 [hep-th]]. |
Start Year | 2007 |