Heavy flavor diffusion in weakly coupled N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory

We use perturbation theory to compute the diffusion coefficient of a heavy quark or scalar moving in N=4 SU(N_c) Super Yang-Mills plasma to leading order in the coupling and the ratio T/M<<1. The result is compared both to recent strong coupling calculations in the same theory and to the corresponding weak coupling result in QCD. Finally, we present a compact and simple formulation of the Lagrangian of our theory, N=4 SYM coupled to a massive fundamental N=2 hypermultiplet, which is well-suited for weak coupling expansions.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures; v3: error corrected in calculations, figures and discussion modified accordingl

Hard thermal loops and the entropy of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories

We apply the previously proposed scheme of approximately self-consistent hard-thermal-loop resummations in the entropy of high-temperature QCD to N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theories and compare with a (uniquely determined) R[4,4] Pad\'e approximant that interpolates accurately between the known perturbative result and the next-to-leading order strong-coupling result obtained from AdS/CFT correspondence. We find good agreement up to couplings where the entropy has dropped to about 85% of the Stefan-Boltzmann value. This is precisely the regime which in purely gluonic QCD corresponds to temperatures above 2.5 times the deconfinement temperature and for which this method of hard-thermal-loop resummation has given similar good agreement with lattice QCD results. This suggests that in this regime the entropy of both QCD and N=4 SYM is dominated by effectively weakly coupled hard-thermal-loop quasiparticle degrees of freedom. In N=4 SYM, strong-coupling contributions to the thermodynamic potential take over when the entropy drops below 85% of the Stefan-Boltzmann value.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, JHEP3. v2: revised and expanded, with unchanged HTL results but corrected NLO strong-coupling result from AdS/CFT (which is incorrectly reproduced in almost all previous papers comparing weak and strong coupling results of N=4 SYM) and novel (unique) Pade approximant interpolating between weak and strong coupling result

Dissipative force on an external quark in heavy quark cloud

Within the finite temperature N = 4 strongly coupled super Yang- Mills, we compute the dissipative force on an external quark in the presence of evenly distributed heavy quark cloud. This is computed holographically by constructing the corresponding gravity dual. We study the behaviour of this force as a function of the cloud density. Along the way we also analyze the stability of the gravity dual for vector and tensor perturbations.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, significant improvements, to be appeared in Physics Letters

The Hydrodynamics of M-Theory

We consider the low energy limit of a stack of N M-branes at finite temperature. In this limit, the M-branes are well described, via the AdS/CFT correspondence, in terms of classical solutions to the eleven dimensional supergravity equations of motion. We calculate Minkowski space two-point functions on these M-branes in the long-distance, low-frequency limit, i.e. the hydrodynamic limit, using the prescription of Son and Starinets [hep-th/0205051]. From these Green's functions for the R-currents and for components of the stress-energy tensor, we extract two kinds of diffusion constant and a viscosity. The N dependence of these physical quantities may help lead to a better understanding of M-branes.Comment: 1+19 pages, references added, section 5 clarified, eq. (72) correcte

Jet quenching within a hybrid strong/weak coupling approach

We propose a novel hybrid model for jet quenching, including both strong and weak coupling physics where each seems appropriate. Branching in the parton shower is assumed to be perturbative and described by DGLAP evolution, while interactions with the medium result in each parton in the shower losing energy as at strong coupling, as realized holographically. The medium-modified parton shower is embedded into a hydrodynamic evolution of hot QCD plasma and confronted with LHC jet data.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, Quark Matter 2014 proceeding

String Theory and Quantum Chromodynamics

I review recent progress on the connection between string theory and quantum chromodynamics in the context of the gauge/gravity duality. Emphasis is placed on conciseness and conceptual aspects rather than on technical details. Topics covered include the large-Nc limit of gauge theories, the gravitational description of gauge theory thermodynamics and hydrodynamics, and confinement/deconfinement thermal phase transitions.Comment: 38 pages, 24 figures. Lectures given at the RTN Winter School on "Strings, Supergravity and Gauge Theories" at CERN on January 15-19, 200

Shear Viscosity to Entropy Density Ratio of QCD below the Deconfinement Temperature

Using chiral perturbation theory we investigate the QCD shear viscosity to entropy density ratio below the deconfinement temperature (~170 MeV) with zero baryon number density. It is found that the viscosity to entropy density ratio of QCD is monotonically decreasing in temperature (T) and reaches 0.6 with estimated ~50% uncertainty at T=120 MeV. A naive extrapolation of the leading order result shows that the ratio reaches the 1/(4 pi) minimum bound proposed by Kovtun, Son, and Starinets using string theory methods at T~200 MeV. This suggests a phase transition or cross over might occur at T less than 200 MeV in order for the bound to remain valid. Also, it is natural for the ratio to stay close to the minimum bound around the phase transition temperature as was recently found in heavy ion collisions.Comment: 12 pages and 2 figure

Parton Energy Loss in Strongly Coupled AdS/CFT

This is a brief review of the theory and phenomenology of parton energy loss in strongly coupled field theories with a gravity dual and its comparison with parton energy loss in QCD at weak coupling.Comment: Invited lecture at Hard Probes 2010, Eilat, Israel. Error in Table 1 and Fig. 7 corrected (thanks to E. Iancu

Transition from ergodic to explosive behavior in a family of stochastic differential equations

We study a family of quadratic stochastic differential equations in the plane, motivated by applications to turbulent transport of heavy particles. Using Lyapunov functions, we find a critical parameter value $\alpha_{1}=\alpha_{2}$ such that when $\alpha_{2}>\alpha_{1}$ the system is ergodic and when $\alpha_{2}<\alpha_{1}$ solutions are not defined for all times. H\"{o}rmander's hypoellipticity theorem and geometric control theory are also utilized.Comment: 35 pages, 6 figure

Bulk viscosity of gauge theory plasma at strong coupling

We propose a lower bound on bulk viscosity of strongly coupled gauge theory plasmas. Using explicit example of the N=2^* gauge theory plasma we show that the bulk viscosity remains finite at a critical point with a divergent specific heat. We present an estimate for the bulk viscosity of QGP plasma at RHIC.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure