The AdS/CFT correspondence and the quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

The aim of this project is to study applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence to strongly coupled plasmas similar to the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. The project is articulated in three parts. Initially, we will study how some observables, such as the Chern-Simons diffusion rate and the bulk viscosity, are affected by spatial anisotropies present in the plasma. This is important, since the QGP produced in real world experiments generically starts in highly anisotropic configurations, which later evolve towards isotropy. To model anisotropy at strong coupling we will make use of an anisotropic black hole solution of type IIB supergravity which has been recently obtained in 1105.3472. As a second direction of research and again focusing on applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence to the QGP, we will investigate Lovelock theories of gravity, which are a natural generalization of Einstein's general relativity. These theories contain higher curvature terms while maintaining the equations of motion of second order and constitute an ideal arena where to start understanding how higher derivative corrections affect various physical observables of the plasma. Finally, after these more applied studies, we will investigate more structural aspects of the AdS/CFT correspondence, related to the extension of holographic renormalization procedures to extended charges and higher degree forms. A concrete application of this analysis will be the study of the thermodynamical properties of the black hole of 1105.3472 in the grand-canonical ensemble. (AU)