Off-center collisions in AdS_5 with applications to multiplicity estimates in heavy-ion collisions

We study the trapped surface produced by an off-center collision of light-like, point-sourced shock waves in anti-de Sitter space. We find an analytic expression for the shape of the trapped surface in the limit where the energy of the shock waves is large and the impact parameter is not too large. We use the area of the trapped surface to estimate a lower bound on the entropy produced in the collision. We compare our results to particle multiplicity measurements in heavy-ion collisions as interpreted through the Glauber model. In an attempt to roughly simulate the effects of asymptotic freedom and confinement in quantum chromodynamics, we also consider the effects of slicing off parts of anti-de Sitter space.Comment: 43 pages, 12 figures, 2 appendice

Saturation physics and angular correlations at RHIC and LHC

We investigate the angular correlation between pions and photons produced in deuteron-gold collisions at RHIC and proton-lead collisions at LHC using the Color Glass Condensate formalism and make predictions for the dependence of the production cross section on the angle between the pion and photon at different rapidities and transverse momenta. Measuring this dependence would shed further light on the role of high gluon density and saturation dynamics at RHIC and LHC.Comment: 2-column EPJ C format, requires svjour.cls and svepj.clo; 4 pages, 4 figure

Pomeron loop and running coupling effects in high energy QCD evolution

Within the framework of a (1+1)-dimensional model which mimics evolution and scattering in QCD at high energy, we study the influence of the running of the coupling on the high-energy dynamics with Pomeron loops. We find that the particle number fluctuations are strongly suppressed by the running of the coupling, by at least one order of magnitude as compared to the case of a fixed coupling, for all the rapidities that we have investigated, up to Y=200. This reflects the slowing down of the evolution by running coupling effects, in particular, the large rapidity evolution which is required for the formation of the saturation front via diffusion. We conclude that, for all energies of interest, processes like deep inelastic scattering or forward particle production can be reliably studied within the framework of a mean-field approximation (like the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation) which includes running coupling effects.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure

Asymmetric Collision of Two Shock Waves in AdS_5

We consider high energy collisions of two shock waves in AdS_5 as a model of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions in the boundary theory. We first calculate the graviton field produced in the collisions in the NLO and NNLO approximations, corresponding to three- and four-graviton exchanges with the shock waves. We then consider the asymmetric limit where the energy density in one shock wave is much higher than in the other one. In the boundary theory this setup corresponds to proton-nucleus collisions, with the nucleus being the denser of the two shock waves and the proton being the less dense one. Employing the eikonal approximation we find the exact high energy analytic solution for the metric in AdS_5 for the asymmetric collision of two delta-function shock waves. The solution resums all-order graviton exchanges with the "nucleus" shock wave and a single-graviton exchange with the "proton" shock wave. Using the holographic renormalization prescription we read off the energy-momentum tensor of the matter produced in proton-nucleus collisions. We show in explicit detail that in the boundary theory the proton is completely stopped by strong-coupling interactions with the nucleus, in agreement with our earlier results. We also apply the eikonal technique to the asymmetric collision of two unphysical delta-prime shock waves, which we introduced in an earlier work as a means of modeling nuclear collisions with weak coupling initial dynamics. We obtain a surprising result that, for delta-prime shock waves, the multiple bulk graviton exchange series giving the leading energy-dependent contribution to the energy-momentum tensor terminates at the order of two graviton exchanges with the nucleus.Comment: 44 pages, 8 figures; v2: typos corrected, references added; v3: a subsection added, more typos correcte

Shockwaves and deep inelastic scattering within the gauge/gravity duality

Within the gauge/gravity correspondence, we discuss the general formulation of the shockwave metric which is dual to a 'nucleus' described by the strongly-coupled N=4 SYM theory in the limit where the number of colors Nc is arbitrarily large. We emphasize that the 'nucleus' must possess Nc^2 degrees of freedom per unit volume, so like a finite-temperature plasma, in order for a supergravity description to exist. We critically reassess previous proposals for introducing transverse inhomogeneity in the shockwave and formulate a new proposal in that sense, which involves no external source but requires the introduction of an 'infrared' cutoff which mimics confinement. This cutoff however plays no role when the shockwave is probed by a highly virtual projectile, so like in deep inelastic scattering. We consider two such projectiles, the dilaton and the R-current, and compute the respective structure functions including unitarity corrections. We find that there are no leading-twist contributions to the structure functions at high virtuality, meaning that there are no point-like constituents in the strongly coupled 'nucleus'. In the black-disk regime at low virtuality, the structure functions are suggestive of parton saturation with occupation numbers of order one. The saturation momentum Qs grows with the energy like Qs^2 ~ 1/x (with x the Bjorken variable), which is the hallmark of graviton exchanges and is also necessary for the fulfillment of the energy-momentum sum rules.Comment: 43 page

The dynamics of quark-gluon plasma and AdS/CFT

In these pedagogical lectures, we present the techniques of the AdS/CFT correspondence which can be applied to the study of real time dynamics of a strongly coupled plasma system. These methods are based on solving gravitational Einstein's equations on the string/gravity side of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We illustrate these techniques with applications to the boost-invariant expansion of a plasma system. We emphasize the common underlying AdS/CFT description both in the large proper time regime where hydrodynamic dynamics dominates, and in the small proper time regime where the dynamics is far from equilibrium. These AdS/CFT methods provide a fascinating arena interrelating General Relativity phenomenae with strongly coupled gauge theory physics.Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures. Lectures at the 5th Aegean summer school, `From gravity to thermal gauge theories: the AdS/CFT correspondence'. To appear in the proceedings in `Lecture Notes in Physics

Non-linear QCD dynamics and exclusive production in epep collisions

The exclusive processes in electron-proton ($ep$) interactions are an important tool to investigate the QCD dynamics at high energies as they are in general driven by the gluon content of proton which is strongly subject to parton saturation effects. In this paper we compute the cross sections for the exclusive vector meson production as well as the deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) relying on the color dipole approach and considering the numerical solution of the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation including running coupling corrections. We show that the small-$x$ evolution given by this evolution equation is able to describe the DESY-HERA data and is relevant for the physics of the exclusive observables in future electron-proton colliders and in photoproduction processes to be measured in coherent interactions at the LHC.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Non-linear QCD dynamics in two-photon interactions at high energies

Perturbative QCD predicts that the growth of the gluon density at high energies should saturate, forming a Color Glass Condensate (CGC), which is described in mean field approximation by the Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation. In this paper we study the $\gamma \gamma$ interactions at high energies and estimate the main observables which will be probed at future linear colliders using the color dipole picture. We discuss in detail the dipole - dipole cross section and propose a new relation between this quantity and the dipole scattering amplitude. The total $\gamma \gamma$, $\gamma^{*} \gamma^{*}$ cross-sections and the real photon structure function $F_2^{\gamma}(x,Q^2)$ are calculated using the recent solution of the BK equation with running coupling constant and the predictions are compared with those obtained using phenomenological models for the dipole-dipole cross section and scattering amplitude. We demonstrate that these models are able to describe the LEP data at high energies, but predict a very different behavior for the observables at higher energies. Therefore we conclude that the study of $\gamma \gamma$ interactions can be useful to constrain the QCD dynamics.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Version to be published in European Physical Journal

Heavy-quark energy loss in pQCD and SYM plasmas

We consider heavy-quark energy loss and pT-broadening in a strongly-coupled N=4 Super Yang Mills (SYM) plasma, and the problem of finite-extend matter is addressed. When expressed in terms of the appropriate saturation momentum, one finds identical parametric forms for the energy loss in pQCD and SYM theory, while pT-broadening is radiation dominated in SYM theory and multiple scattering dominated in pQCD.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings of the IIIrd Workshop for Young Scientists on the Physics of Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (HotQuarks08), Estes Park, USA, August 18-23 200

Glauber - Gribov approach for DIS on nuclei in N=4 SYM

In this paper the Glauber-Gribov approach for deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) with nuclei is developed in N=4 SYM. It is shown that the amplitude displays the same general properties, such as geometrical scaling, as is the case in the high density QCD approach. We found that the quantum effects leading to the graviton reggeization, give rise to an imaginary part of the nucleon amplitude, which makes the DIS in N=4 SYM almost identical to the one expected in high density QCD. We concluded that the impact parameter dependence of the nucleon amplitude is very essential for N=4 SYM, and the entire kinematic region can be divided into three regions which are discussed in the paper. We revisited the dipole description for DIS and proposed a new renormalized Lagrangian for the shock wave formalism which reproduces the Glauber-Gribov approach in a certain kinematic region. However the saturation momentum turns out to be independent of energy, as it has been discussed by Albacete, Kovchegov and Taliotis. We discuss the physical meaning of such a saturation momentum $Q_s(A)$ and argue that one can consider only $Q>Q_s(A)$ within the shock wave approximation.Comment: 40pp.,9 figures in eps file