EMMI Rapid Reaction Task Force on "Thermalization in Non-abelian Plasmas"

Recently, different proposals have been put forward on how thermalization proceeds in heavy-ion collisions in the idealized limit of very large nuclei at sufficiently high energy. Important aspects of the parametric estimates at weak coupling may be tested using well-established classical-statistical lattice simulations of the far-from-equilibrium gluon dynamics. This has to be confronted with strong coupling scenarios in related theories based on gauge-string dualities. Furthermore, closely related questions about far-from-equilibrium dynamics arise in early-universe cosmology and in non-relativistic systems of ultracold atoms. These were central topics of the EMMI Rapid Reaction Task Force meeting held on December 12-14, 2011, at the University of Heidelberg, which we report on.Comment: 13 pages, summary of the EMMI Rapid Reaction Task Force on "Thermalization in Non-abelian Plasmas", December 12-14, 2011, University of Heidelberg, German

Toward the AdS/CFT dual of the "Little Bang"

This (rather subjective) review sums up few years of work devoted to explain various aspects of high energy heavy ion collisions using the AdS/CFT correspondence. The central issue of is is formation of the trapped surface (black hole) phenomenon, seen by a distant observer as the entropy production. We end up discussing an issue of classical gravitational radiation by an ultrarelativistic falling body and the so called breaking self-force related to it.Comment: a review to appear in topical volume of reviews collected by editors, S.Bass and G.Casaladerrey-Solan