Topological regularization and self-duality in four-dimensional anti-de Sitter gravity

It is shown that the addition of a topological invariant (Gauss-Bonnet term) to the anti-de Sitter (AdS) gravity action in four dimensions recovers the standard regularization given by holographic renormalization procedure. This crucial step makes possible the inclusion of an odd parity invariant (Pontryagin term) whose coupling is fixed by demanding an asymptotic (anti) self-dual condition on the Weyl tensor. This argument allows to find the dual point of the theory where the holographic stress tensor is related to the boundary Cotton tensor as $T_{j}^{i}=\pm (\ell ^{2}/8\pi G)C_{j}^{i}$, which has been observed in recent literature in solitonic solutions and hydrodynamic models. A general procedure to generate the counterterm series for AdS gravity in any even dimension from the corresponding Euler term is also briefly discussed.Comment: 13 pages, no figures; enlarged discussion on self-duality condition for AAdS spacetimes, references added, final version for PR

Turning waves and breakdown for incompressible flows

We consider the evolution of an interface generated between two immiscible incompressible and irrotational fluids. Specifically we study the Muskat and water wave problems. We show that starting with a family of initial data given by (\al,f_0(\al)), the interface reaches a regime in finite time in which is no longer a graph. Therefore there exists a time $t^*$ where the solution of the free boundary problem parameterized as (\al,f(\al,t)) blows-up: \|\da f\|_{L^\infty}(t^*)=\infty. In particular, for the Muskat problem, this result allows us to reach an unstable regime, for which the Rayleigh-Taylor condition changes sign and the solution breaks down.Comment: 15 page

Spinning flavour branes and fermion pairing instabilities

We consider probe Dp-branes, p=3,5,7, in global AdS_5 x S^5, rotating along an internal direction in the S^5. These are dual to strongly interacting N=4 SYM on S^3 with massless fundamental flavours, in the presence of an R-symmetry chemical potential for flavour fermions. For massless, "AdS-filling" Dp-brane embeddings at zero temperature, we find an infinite set of threshold values of the chemical potential at which instabilities are triggered. The onset of instability is always preceded by metastability of the zero density state. From the onset values of the chemical potential, we infer that unstable directions favour a homogeneous condensate of a bilinear made from fermion harmonics, or Cooper pairing. We confirm this picture both numerically and analytically. The linearized analysis showing the appearance of instabilities involves a charged scalar in global AdS space coupled to a (large) constant background gauge potential. The resulting frequency space correlator of the fermion bilinear at strong coupling displays poles in the upper half plane. In contrast, the correlator at zero coupling exhibits Pauli blocking due to occupation of states below the Fermi level, but no instabilities. The end-point of the strong coupling instability is not visible in our setup.Comment: 44 pages, 10 figures, uses late

Asymptotic perfect fluid dynamics as a consequence of AdS/CFT

We study the dynamics of strongly interacting gauge-theory matter (modelling quark-gluon plasma) in a boost-invariant setting using the AdS/CFT correspondence. Using Fefferman-Graham coordinates and with the help of holographic renormalization, we show that perfect fluid hydrodynamics emerges at large times as the unique nonsingular asymptotic solution of the nonlinear Einstein equations in the bulk. The gravity dual can be interpreted as a black hole moving off in the fifth dimension. Asymptotic solutions different from perfect fluid behaviour can be ruled out by the appearance of curvature singularities in the dual bulk geometry. Subasymptotic deviations from perfect fluid behaviour remain possible within the same framework.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure; v2: free streaming example changed to s=1; conclusions unchange

Chiral Transition of N=4 Super Yang-Mills with Flavor on a 3-Sphere

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to perform a numerical study of a phase transition in strongly-coupled large-Nc N = 4 Super-Yang-Mills theory on a 3-sphere coupled to a finite number Nf of massive N = 2 hypermultiplets in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. The gravity dual system is a number Nf of probe D7-branes embedded in AdS_5 x S^5. We draw the phase diagram for this theory in the plane of hypermultiplet mass versus temperature and identify for temperatures above the Hawking-Page deconfinement temperature a first-order phase transition line across which the chiral condensate jumps discontinuously.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, minor corrections, reference added, nine figures improved, no change in results or conclusions; expanded discussion of fixing finite counterterms in section 3.3, figures updated, no changes to conclusion

Cosmology from an AdS Schwarzschild black hole via holography

We derive the equations of cosmological evolution from an AdS Schwarzschild black hole via holographic renormalization with appropriate boundary conditions.Comment: 6 page

Early Time Dynamics in Heavy Ion Collisions from AdS/CFT Correspondence

We study the matter produced in heavy ion collisions assuming that this matter is strongly interacting and employing AdS/CFT correspondence to investigate its dynamics. At late proper times we show that Bjorken hydrodynamics solution, obtained recently by Janik and Peschanski using gauge-gravity duality [hep-th/0512162], can be singled out by simply requiring that the metric tensor is a real and single-valued function of the coordinates everywhere in the bulk, without imposing any constraints on the curvature invariant. At early proper times we use similar strategy to show that the energy density approaches a constant as proper time goes to zero. We therefore demonstrate that the strong coupling dynamics incorporates the isotropization transition in heavy ion collisions. By matching our early-time regime with the late-time one of Janik and Peschanski we estimate the isotropization time at RHIC to be approximately 0.3 fm/c, in good agreement with results of hydrodynamic simulations.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures; v2: some references added, minor typos correcte