Ayan Mukhopadhyay | Technische Universität Wien (original) (raw)

Papers by Ayan Mukhopadhyay

Research paper thumbnail of Quasinormal modes of a semi-holographic black brane and thermalization

Journal of High Energy Physics

We study the quasinormal modes and non-linear dynamics of a simplified model of semi-holography, ... more We study the quasinormal modes and non-linear dynamics of a simplified model of semi-holography, which consistently integrates mutually interacting perturbative and strongly coupled holographic degrees of freedom such that the full system has a total conserved energy. We show that the thermalization of the full system can be parametrically slow when the mutual coupling is weak. For typical homogeneous initial states, we find that initially energy is transferred from the black brane to the perturbative sector, later giving way to complete transfer of energy to the black brane at a slow and constant rate, while the entropy grows monotonically for all time. Larger mutual coupling between the two sectors leads to larger extraction of energy from the black brane by the boundary perturbative system, but also quicker irreversible transfer of energy back to the black brane. The quasinormal modes replicate features of a dissipative system with a softly broken symmetry including the so-called...

Research paper thumbnail of Hydrodynamic attractor of a hybrid viscous fluid in Bjorken flow

Physical Review Research

The nonequilibrium evolution in a boost-invariant Bjorken flow of a hybrid viscous fluid model co... more The nonequilibrium evolution in a boost-invariant Bjorken flow of a hybrid viscous fluid model containing two interacting components with different viscosities, such that they represent strongly and weakly self-coupled sectors, is shown to be characterized by a hydrodynamic attractor which has an early-time behavior that is reminiscent of the so-called bottom-up thermalization scenario in heavy-ion collisions. The hydrodynamization times for the two sectors can differ strongly, with details depending on the curve realized on the two-dimensional attractor surface, which might account for different scenarios for small and large systems in nuclear collisions. The total system behaves as a single viscous fluid with a dynamically determined effective shear viscosity.

Research paper thumbnail of Density response and collective modes of semiholographic non-Fermi liquids

Physical Review D

Semiholographic models of non-Fermi liquids have been shown to have generically stable generalize... more Semiholographic models of non-Fermi liquids have been shown to have generically stable generalized quasiparticles on the Fermi surface. Although these excitations are broad and exhibit particle-hole asymmetry, they were argued to be stable from interactions at the Fermi surface. In this work, we use this observation to compute the density response and collective behaviour in these systems. Compared to the Fermi liquid case, we find that the boundaries of the particle-hole continuum are blurred by incoherent contributions. However, there is a region inside this continuum, that we call inner core, within which salient features of the Fermi liquid case are preserved. A particularly striking prediction of our work is that these systems support a plasmonic collective excitation which is well-defined at large momenta, has an approximately linear dispersion relation and is located in the low-energy tail of the particle-hole continuum. Furthermore, the dynamic screening potential shows deep attractive regions as a function of the distance at higher frequencies which might lead to long-lived pair formation depending on the behavior of the pair susceptibility. We also find that Friedel oscillations are present in these systems but are highly suppressed.

Research paper thumbnail of Time-dependent NAdS2 holography with applications

Research paper thumbnail of Time evolution of a toy semiholographic glasma

Journal of High Energy Physics

We extend our previous study of a toy model for coupling classical Yang-Mills equations for descr... more We extend our previous study of a toy model for coupling classical Yang-Mills equations for describing overoccupied gluons at the saturation scale with a strongly coupled infrared sector modeled by AdS/CFT. Including propagating modes in the bulk we find that the Yang-Mills sector loses its initial energy to a growing black hole in the gravity dual such that there is a conserved energy-momentum tensor for the total system while entropy grows monotonically. This involves a numerical AdS simulation with a backreacted boundary source far from equilibrium.

Research paper thumbnail of Understanding the holographic principle via RG flow

International Journal of Modern Physics A, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Emergence of Gravity and RG Flow

Fundamental Theories of Physics, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Illustrated study of the semiholographic nonperturbative framework

Research paper thumbnail of Holography as a highly efficient renormalization group flow. II. An explicit construction

Research paper thumbnail of Semiholography for heavy ion collisions

EPJ Web of Conferences, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Time-dependence of the holographic spectral function: diverse routes to thermalisation

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Semi-holography for heavy ion collisions: self-consistency and first numerical tests

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of An AdS/CFT Connection between Boltzmann and Einstein

The AdS/CFT correspondence defines a sector with universal strongly coupled dynamics in the field... more The AdS/CFT correspondence defines a sector with universal strongly coupled dynamics in the field theory as the dual of pure gravity in AdS described by Einstein's equation with a negative cosmological constant. We explain here, from the field-theoretic viewpoint how the dynamics in this sector gets determined by the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor \emph{alone}. We first show that the Boltzmann equation has very special solutions which could be \textit{functionally} completely determined in terms of the energy-momentum tensor alone. We call these solutions \textit{conservative solutions}. We indicate why conservative solutions should also exist when we refine this kinetic description to go closer to the exact microscopic theory or even move away from the regime of weak coupling so that no kinetic description could be employed. We argue that these \textit{conservative solutions} form the universal sector dual to pure gravity at strong coupling and large NNN. Based on this observation, we propose a \textit{regularity condition} on the energy-momentum tensor so that the dual solution in pure gravity has a smooth future horizon. We also study if irreversibility emerges only at long time scales of observation, unlike the case of the Boltzmann equation.

Research paper thumbnail of A semi-holographic model for heavy-ion collisions

ABSTRACT We develop a semi-holographic model for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics during the parto... more ABSTRACT We develop a semi-holographic model for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics during the partonic stages of an ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collision. The model combines a weakly-coupled hard sector, involving gluon modes with energy and momenta of the order of the saturation momentum and relatively large occupation numbers, with a strongly-coupled soft sector, which physically represents the soft gluons radiated by the hard partons. The hard sector is described by perturbative QCD, more precisely, by its semi-classical approximation (the classical Yang-Mills equations) which becomes appropriate when the occupation numbers are large. The soft sector is described by a marginally deformed conformal field theory, which in turn admits a holographic description in terms of classical Einstein's equations in AdS5 with a minimally coupled massless `dilaton'. The model involve two free parameters which characterize the gauge-invariant couplings between the hard and soft sectors. Via these couplings, the hard modes provide dynamical sources for the gravitational equations at the boundary of AdS5 and feel the feedback of the latter as additional soft sources in the classical Yang-Mills equations. Importantly, the initial conditions for this coupled dynamics are fully determined by the hard sector alone, i.e. by perturbative QCD, and are conveniently given by the color glass condensate (CGC) effective theory. We also develop a new semi-holographic picture of jets in the QGP by attaching a non-Abelian charge to the endpoint of the trailing string in AdS5 representing a heavy quark. This leads to modified Nambu-Goto equations for the string which govern the (collisional and radiative) energy loss by the heavy quark towards both hard and soft modes.

Research paper thumbnail of A Covariant Form of the Navier-Stokes Equation for the Galilean Conformal Algebra

J High Energy Phys, Aug 6, 2009

We demonstrate that the Navier-Stokes equation can be covariantized under the full infinite dimen... more We demonstrate that the Navier-Stokes equation can be covariantized under the full infinite dimensional Galilean Conformal Algebra (GCA), such that it reduces to the usual Navier-Stokes equation in an inertial frame. The covariantization is possible only for incompressible flows, i.e when the divergence of the velocity field vanishes. Using the continuity equation, we can fix the transformation of pressure and density under GCA uniquely. We also find that when all chemical potentials vanish, csc_{s}cs, which denotes the speed of sound in an inertial frame comoving with the flow, must either be a fundamental constant or given in terms of microscopic parameters. We will discuss how both could be possible. In absence of chemical potentials, we also find that the covariance under GCA implies that either the viscosity should vanish or the microscopic theory should have a length scale or a time scale or both. We further find that the higher derivative corrections to the Navier-Stokes equation, can be covariantized, only if they are restricted to certain possible combinations in the inertial frame. We explicitly evaluate all possible three derivative corrections. Finally, we argue that our analysis hints that the parent relativistic theory with relativistic conformal symmetry needs to be deformed before the contraction is taken to produce a sensible GCA invariant dynamical limit.

Research paper thumbnail of Holography as a highly efficient RG flow : Part 1

We investigate how the holographic correspondence can be reformulated as a generalisation of Wils... more We investigate how the holographic correspondence can be reformulated as a generalisation of Wilsonian RG flow in a strongly interacting large N quantum field theory. We firstly define a highly efficient RG flow as one in which the Ward identities related to local conservation of energy, momentum and charges preserve the same form at each scale -to achieve this it is necessary to redefine the background metric and external sources at each scale as functionals of the effective single trace operators. These redefinitions also absorb the contributions of the multi-trace operators to these effective Ward identities. Thus the background metric and external sources become effectively dynamical reproducing the dual classical gravity equations in one higher dimension. Here, we focus on reconstructing the pure gravity sector as a highly efficient RG flow of the energy-momentum tensor operator, leaving the explicit constructive field theory approach for generating such RG flows to the second part of the work. We show that special symmetries of the highly efficient RG flows carry information through which we can decode the gauge fixing of bulk diffeomorphisms in the corresponding gravity equations. We also show that the highly efficient RG flow which reproduces a given classical gravity theory in a given gauge is unique provided the endpoint can be transformed to a non-relativistic fixed point with a finite number of parameters under a universal rescaling.

Research paper thumbnail of A semi-holographic model for heavy-ion collisions

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2015

ABSTRACT We develop a semi-holographic model for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics during the parto... more ABSTRACT We develop a semi-holographic model for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics during the partonic stages of an ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collision. The model combines a weakly-coupled hard sector, involving gluon modes with energy and momenta of the order of the saturation momentum and relatively large occupation numbers, with a strongly-coupled soft sector, which physically represents the soft gluons radiated by the hard partons. The hard sector is described by perturbative QCD, more precisely, by its semi-classical approximation (the classical Yang-Mills equations) which becomes appropriate when the occupation numbers are large. The soft sector is described by a marginally deformed conformal field theory, which in turn admits a holographic description in terms of classical Einstein's equations in AdS5 with a minimally coupled massless `dilaton'. The model involve two free parameters which characterize the gauge-invariant couplings between the hard and soft sectors. Via these couplings, the hard modes provide dynamical sources for the gravitational equations at the boundary of AdS5 and feel the feedback of the latter as additional soft sources in the classical Yang-Mills equations. Importantly, the initial conditions for this coupled dynamics are fully determined by the hard sector alone, i.e. by perturbative QCD, and are conveniently given by the color glass condensate (CGC) effective theory. We also develop a new semi-holographic picture of jets in the QGP by attaching a non-Abelian charge to the endpoint of the trailing string in AdS5 representing a heavy quark. This leads to modified Nambu-Goto equations for the string which govern the (collisional and radiative) energy loss by the heavy quark towards both hard and soft modes.

Research paper thumbnail of Petrov classification and holographic reconstruction of spacetime

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2015

ABSTRACT Using the asymptotic form of the bulk Weyl tensor, we present an explicit approach that ... more ABSTRACT Using the asymptotic form of the bulk Weyl tensor, we present an explicit approach that allows us to reconstruct exact four-dimensional Einstein spacetimes which are algebraically special with respect to Petrov's classification. If the boundary metric supports a traceless, symmetric and conserved complex rank-two tensor, which is related to the boundary Cotton and energy--momentum tensors, and if the hydrodynamic congruence is shearless, then the bulk metric is exactly resummed and captures modes that stand beyond the hydrodynamic derivative expansion. We illustrate the method when the hydrodynamic congruence has zero vorticity, which leads to the Robinson--Trautman spacetimes of arbitrary Petrov class.

Research paper thumbnail of Phenomenology of Irreversible Processes from Gravity

We propose that the space-time evolution of strongly coupled matter formed by ultra-relativistic ... more We propose that the space-time evolution of strongly coupled matter formed by ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions can be modelled by phenomenological equations involving the energy-momentum tensor and conserved currents alone. These equations can describe the late stage of local chemical and thermal equilibration of the matter formed after collisions, and its subsequent transition to hydrodynamic expansion in an unified framework. The full set of equations include local energy, momentum and charge conservation; but also additional equations for evolution of non-equilibrium variables. These equations with precisely determined phenomenological parameters can be obtained by the AdS/CFT correspondence. On the gravity side of this correspondence, for vanishing chemical potentials, these phenomenological equations give all solutions of pure gravity in AdS which have regular future horizons. We also discuss field-theoretic grounds for validity of these phenomenological equations.

Research paper thumbnail of Worldsheet properties of extremal correlators in AdS/CFT

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2008

We continue to investigate planar four point worldsheet correlators of string theories which are ... more We continue to investigate planar four point worldsheet correlators of string theories which are conjectured to be duals of free gauge theories. We focus on the extremal correlators Tr(Z J 1 (x))Tr(Z J 2 (y))Tr(Z J 3 (z))Tr(Z J (0))) of N = 4 SYM theory, and construct the corresponding worldsheet correlators in the limit when the J i ≫ 1. The worldsheet correlator gets contributions, in this limit, from a whole family of Feynman graphs. We find that it is supported on a curve in the moduli space parametrised by the worldsheet crossratio. In a further limit of the spacetime correlators we find this curve to be the unit circle. In this case, we also check that the entire worldsheet correlator displays the appropriate crossing symmetry. The nonrenormalization of the extremal correlators in the 't Hooft coupling offers a potential window for a comparison of these results with those from strong coupling. * On lien from Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. 2 1 3 4 1 2 3 4

Research paper thumbnail of Quasinormal modes of a semi-holographic black brane and thermalization

Journal of High Energy Physics

We study the quasinormal modes and non-linear dynamics of a simplified model of semi-holography, ... more We study the quasinormal modes and non-linear dynamics of a simplified model of semi-holography, which consistently integrates mutually interacting perturbative and strongly coupled holographic degrees of freedom such that the full system has a total conserved energy. We show that the thermalization of the full system can be parametrically slow when the mutual coupling is weak. For typical homogeneous initial states, we find that initially energy is transferred from the black brane to the perturbative sector, later giving way to complete transfer of energy to the black brane at a slow and constant rate, while the entropy grows monotonically for all time. Larger mutual coupling between the two sectors leads to larger extraction of energy from the black brane by the boundary perturbative system, but also quicker irreversible transfer of energy back to the black brane. The quasinormal modes replicate features of a dissipative system with a softly broken symmetry including the so-called...

Research paper thumbnail of Hydrodynamic attractor of a hybrid viscous fluid in Bjorken flow

Physical Review Research

The nonequilibrium evolution in a boost-invariant Bjorken flow of a hybrid viscous fluid model co... more The nonequilibrium evolution in a boost-invariant Bjorken flow of a hybrid viscous fluid model containing two interacting components with different viscosities, such that they represent strongly and weakly self-coupled sectors, is shown to be characterized by a hydrodynamic attractor which has an early-time behavior that is reminiscent of the so-called bottom-up thermalization scenario in heavy-ion collisions. The hydrodynamization times for the two sectors can differ strongly, with details depending on the curve realized on the two-dimensional attractor surface, which might account for different scenarios for small and large systems in nuclear collisions. The total system behaves as a single viscous fluid with a dynamically determined effective shear viscosity.

Research paper thumbnail of Density response and collective modes of semiholographic non-Fermi liquids

Physical Review D

Semiholographic models of non-Fermi liquids have been shown to have generically stable generalize... more Semiholographic models of non-Fermi liquids have been shown to have generically stable generalized quasiparticles on the Fermi surface. Although these excitations are broad and exhibit particle-hole asymmetry, they were argued to be stable from interactions at the Fermi surface. In this work, we use this observation to compute the density response and collective behaviour in these systems. Compared to the Fermi liquid case, we find that the boundaries of the particle-hole continuum are blurred by incoherent contributions. However, there is a region inside this continuum, that we call inner core, within which salient features of the Fermi liquid case are preserved. A particularly striking prediction of our work is that these systems support a plasmonic collective excitation which is well-defined at large momenta, has an approximately linear dispersion relation and is located in the low-energy tail of the particle-hole continuum. Furthermore, the dynamic screening potential shows deep attractive regions as a function of the distance at higher frequencies which might lead to long-lived pair formation depending on the behavior of the pair susceptibility. We also find that Friedel oscillations are present in these systems but are highly suppressed.

Research paper thumbnail of Time-dependent NAdS2 holography with applications

Research paper thumbnail of Time evolution of a toy semiholographic glasma

Journal of High Energy Physics

We extend our previous study of a toy model for coupling classical Yang-Mills equations for descr... more We extend our previous study of a toy model for coupling classical Yang-Mills equations for describing overoccupied gluons at the saturation scale with a strongly coupled infrared sector modeled by AdS/CFT. Including propagating modes in the bulk we find that the Yang-Mills sector loses its initial energy to a growing black hole in the gravity dual such that there is a conserved energy-momentum tensor for the total system while entropy grows monotonically. This involves a numerical AdS simulation with a backreacted boundary source far from equilibrium.

Research paper thumbnail of Understanding the holographic principle via RG flow

International Journal of Modern Physics A, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Emergence of Gravity and RG Flow

Fundamental Theories of Physics, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Illustrated study of the semiholographic nonperturbative framework

Research paper thumbnail of Holography as a highly efficient renormalization group flow. II. An explicit construction

Research paper thumbnail of Semiholography for heavy ion collisions

EPJ Web of Conferences, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Time-dependence of the holographic spectral function: diverse routes to thermalisation

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Semi-holography for heavy ion collisions: self-consistency and first numerical tests

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of An AdS/CFT Connection between Boltzmann and Einstein

The AdS/CFT correspondence defines a sector with universal strongly coupled dynamics in the field... more The AdS/CFT correspondence defines a sector with universal strongly coupled dynamics in the field theory as the dual of pure gravity in AdS described by Einstein's equation with a negative cosmological constant. We explain here, from the field-theoretic viewpoint how the dynamics in this sector gets determined by the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor \emph{alone}. We first show that the Boltzmann equation has very special solutions which could be \textit{functionally} completely determined in terms of the energy-momentum tensor alone. We call these solutions \textit{conservative solutions}. We indicate why conservative solutions should also exist when we refine this kinetic description to go closer to the exact microscopic theory or even move away from the regime of weak coupling so that no kinetic description could be employed. We argue that these \textit{conservative solutions} form the universal sector dual to pure gravity at strong coupling and large NNN. Based on this observation, we propose a \textit{regularity condition} on the energy-momentum tensor so that the dual solution in pure gravity has a smooth future horizon. We also study if irreversibility emerges only at long time scales of observation, unlike the case of the Boltzmann equation.

Research paper thumbnail of A semi-holographic model for heavy-ion collisions

ABSTRACT We develop a semi-holographic model for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics during the parto... more ABSTRACT We develop a semi-holographic model for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics during the partonic stages of an ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collision. The model combines a weakly-coupled hard sector, involving gluon modes with energy and momenta of the order of the saturation momentum and relatively large occupation numbers, with a strongly-coupled soft sector, which physically represents the soft gluons radiated by the hard partons. The hard sector is described by perturbative QCD, more precisely, by its semi-classical approximation (the classical Yang-Mills equations) which becomes appropriate when the occupation numbers are large. The soft sector is described by a marginally deformed conformal field theory, which in turn admits a holographic description in terms of classical Einstein's equations in AdS5 with a minimally coupled massless `dilaton'. The model involve two free parameters which characterize the gauge-invariant couplings between the hard and soft sectors. Via these couplings, the hard modes provide dynamical sources for the gravitational equations at the boundary of AdS5 and feel the feedback of the latter as additional soft sources in the classical Yang-Mills equations. Importantly, the initial conditions for this coupled dynamics are fully determined by the hard sector alone, i.e. by perturbative QCD, and are conveniently given by the color glass condensate (CGC) effective theory. We also develop a new semi-holographic picture of jets in the QGP by attaching a non-Abelian charge to the endpoint of the trailing string in AdS5 representing a heavy quark. This leads to modified Nambu-Goto equations for the string which govern the (collisional and radiative) energy loss by the heavy quark towards both hard and soft modes.

Research paper thumbnail of A Covariant Form of the Navier-Stokes Equation for the Galilean Conformal Algebra

J High Energy Phys, Aug 6, 2009

We demonstrate that the Navier-Stokes equation can be covariantized under the full infinite dimen... more We demonstrate that the Navier-Stokes equation can be covariantized under the full infinite dimensional Galilean Conformal Algebra (GCA), such that it reduces to the usual Navier-Stokes equation in an inertial frame. The covariantization is possible only for incompressible flows, i.e when the divergence of the velocity field vanishes. Using the continuity equation, we can fix the transformation of pressure and density under GCA uniquely. We also find that when all chemical potentials vanish, csc_{s}cs, which denotes the speed of sound in an inertial frame comoving with the flow, must either be a fundamental constant or given in terms of microscopic parameters. We will discuss how both could be possible. In absence of chemical potentials, we also find that the covariance under GCA implies that either the viscosity should vanish or the microscopic theory should have a length scale or a time scale or both. We further find that the higher derivative corrections to the Navier-Stokes equation, can be covariantized, only if they are restricted to certain possible combinations in the inertial frame. We explicitly evaluate all possible three derivative corrections. Finally, we argue that our analysis hints that the parent relativistic theory with relativistic conformal symmetry needs to be deformed before the contraction is taken to produce a sensible GCA invariant dynamical limit.

Research paper thumbnail of Holography as a highly efficient RG flow : Part 1

We investigate how the holographic correspondence can be reformulated as a generalisation of Wils... more We investigate how the holographic correspondence can be reformulated as a generalisation of Wilsonian RG flow in a strongly interacting large N quantum field theory. We firstly define a highly efficient RG flow as one in which the Ward identities related to local conservation of energy, momentum and charges preserve the same form at each scale -to achieve this it is necessary to redefine the background metric and external sources at each scale as functionals of the effective single trace operators. These redefinitions also absorb the contributions of the multi-trace operators to these effective Ward identities. Thus the background metric and external sources become effectively dynamical reproducing the dual classical gravity equations in one higher dimension. Here, we focus on reconstructing the pure gravity sector as a highly efficient RG flow of the energy-momentum tensor operator, leaving the explicit constructive field theory approach for generating such RG flows to the second part of the work. We show that special symmetries of the highly efficient RG flows carry information through which we can decode the gauge fixing of bulk diffeomorphisms in the corresponding gravity equations. We also show that the highly efficient RG flow which reproduces a given classical gravity theory in a given gauge is unique provided the endpoint can be transformed to a non-relativistic fixed point with a finite number of parameters under a universal rescaling.

Research paper thumbnail of A semi-holographic model for heavy-ion collisions

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2015

ABSTRACT We develop a semi-holographic model for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics during the parto... more ABSTRACT We develop a semi-holographic model for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics during the partonic stages of an ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collision. The model combines a weakly-coupled hard sector, involving gluon modes with energy and momenta of the order of the saturation momentum and relatively large occupation numbers, with a strongly-coupled soft sector, which physically represents the soft gluons radiated by the hard partons. The hard sector is described by perturbative QCD, more precisely, by its semi-classical approximation (the classical Yang-Mills equations) which becomes appropriate when the occupation numbers are large. The soft sector is described by a marginally deformed conformal field theory, which in turn admits a holographic description in terms of classical Einstein's equations in AdS5 with a minimally coupled massless `dilaton'. The model involve two free parameters which characterize the gauge-invariant couplings between the hard and soft sectors. Via these couplings, the hard modes provide dynamical sources for the gravitational equations at the boundary of AdS5 and feel the feedback of the latter as additional soft sources in the classical Yang-Mills equations. Importantly, the initial conditions for this coupled dynamics are fully determined by the hard sector alone, i.e. by perturbative QCD, and are conveniently given by the color glass condensate (CGC) effective theory. We also develop a new semi-holographic picture of jets in the QGP by attaching a non-Abelian charge to the endpoint of the trailing string in AdS5 representing a heavy quark. This leads to modified Nambu-Goto equations for the string which govern the (collisional and radiative) energy loss by the heavy quark towards both hard and soft modes.

Research paper thumbnail of Petrov classification and holographic reconstruction of spacetime

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2015

ABSTRACT Using the asymptotic form of the bulk Weyl tensor, we present an explicit approach that ... more ABSTRACT Using the asymptotic form of the bulk Weyl tensor, we present an explicit approach that allows us to reconstruct exact four-dimensional Einstein spacetimes which are algebraically special with respect to Petrov's classification. If the boundary metric supports a traceless, symmetric and conserved complex rank-two tensor, which is related to the boundary Cotton and energy--momentum tensors, and if the hydrodynamic congruence is shearless, then the bulk metric is exactly resummed and captures modes that stand beyond the hydrodynamic derivative expansion. We illustrate the method when the hydrodynamic congruence has zero vorticity, which leads to the Robinson--Trautman spacetimes of arbitrary Petrov class.

Research paper thumbnail of Phenomenology of Irreversible Processes from Gravity

We propose that the space-time evolution of strongly coupled matter formed by ultra-relativistic ... more We propose that the space-time evolution of strongly coupled matter formed by ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions can be modelled by phenomenological equations involving the energy-momentum tensor and conserved currents alone. These equations can describe the late stage of local chemical and thermal equilibration of the matter formed after collisions, and its subsequent transition to hydrodynamic expansion in an unified framework. The full set of equations include local energy, momentum and charge conservation; but also additional equations for evolution of non-equilibrium variables. These equations with precisely determined phenomenological parameters can be obtained by the AdS/CFT correspondence. On the gravity side of this correspondence, for vanishing chemical potentials, these phenomenological equations give all solutions of pure gravity in AdS which have regular future horizons. We also discuss field-theoretic grounds for validity of these phenomenological equations.

Research paper thumbnail of Worldsheet properties of extremal correlators in AdS/CFT

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2008

We continue to investigate planar four point worldsheet correlators of string theories which are ... more We continue to investigate planar four point worldsheet correlators of string theories which are conjectured to be duals of free gauge theories. We focus on the extremal correlators Tr(Z J 1 (x))Tr(Z J 2 (y))Tr(Z J 3 (z))Tr(Z J (0))) of N = 4 SYM theory, and construct the corresponding worldsheet correlators in the limit when the J i ≫ 1. The worldsheet correlator gets contributions, in this limit, from a whole family of Feynman graphs. We find that it is supported on a curve in the moduli space parametrised by the worldsheet crossratio. In a further limit of the spacetime correlators we find this curve to be the unit circle. In this case, we also check that the entire worldsheet correlator displays the appropriate crossing symmetry. The nonrenormalization of the extremal correlators in the 't Hooft coupling offers a potential window for a comparison of these results with those from strong coupling. * On lien from Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. 2 1 3 4 1 2 3 4