Relaxation time of non-conformal plasma

We study effective relaxation time of viscous hydrodynamics of strongly coupled non-conformal gauge theory plasma using gauge theory/string theory correspondence. We compute leading corrections to the conformal plasma relaxation time from the relevant deformations due to dim-2 and dim-3 operators. We discuss in details the relaxation time tau_eff of N=2^* plasma. For a certain choice of masses this theory undergoes a phase transition with divergent specific heat c_V ~ |1-T_c/T|^(-1/2). Although the bulk viscosity remains finite all the way to the critical temperature, we find that tau_eff diverges near the critical point as tau_eff ~ |1-T_c/T|^(-1/2).Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure; v2: references adde

Compactifications of the N=2^* flow

In hep-th/0004063 Pilch and Warner (PW) constructed N=2 supersymmetric RG flow corresponding to the mass deformation of the N=4 SU(N) Yang-Mills theory. In this paper we present exact deformations of PW flow when the gauge theory 3-space is compactified on S^3. We consider also the case with the gauge theory world-volume being dS_4 instead of R^{3,1}. The solution is constructed in five-dimensional gauged supergravity and is further uplifted to 10d.Comment: 17 page

Ringing in de Sitter spacetime

Hydrodynamics is a universal effective theory describing relaxation of quantum field theories towards equilibrium. Massive QFTs in de Sitter spacetime are never at equilibrium. We use holographic gauge theory/gravity correspondence to describe relaxation of a QFT to its Bunch-Davies vacuum - an attractor of its late-time dynamics. Specifically, we compute the analogue of the quasinormal modes describing the relaxation of a holographic toy model QFT in de Sitter.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, 1 supplemental fil