Equation of State and Viscosities from a Gravity Dual of the Gluon Plasma

Employing new precision data of the equation of state of the SU(3) Yang-Mills theory (gluon plasma) the dilaton potential of a gravity-dual model is adjusted in the temperature range $(1 - 10) T_c$ within a bottom-up approach. The ratio of bulk viscosity to shear viscosity follows then as $\zeta/\eta \approx \pi \Delta v_s^2$ for $\Delta v_s^2 < 0.2$ and achieves a maximum value of $0.94$ at $\Delta v_s^2 \approx 0.3$, where $\Delta v_s^2 \equiv 1/3 - v_s^2$ is the non-conformality measure and $v_s^2$ is the velocity of sound squared, while the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density is known as $(4 \pi)^{-1}$ for the considered set-up with Hilbert action on the gravity side.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures. Version published in PL

Plasmons, plasminos and Landau damping in a quasiparticle model of the quark-gluon plasma

A phenomenological quasiparticle model is surveyed for 2+1 quark flavors and compared with recent lattice QCD results. Emphasis is devoted to the effects of plasmons, plasminos and Landau damping. It is shown that thermodynamic bulk quantities, known at zero chemical potential, can uniquely be mapped towards nonzero chemical potential by means of a thermodynamic consistency condition and a stationarity condition.Comment: Sep. 2007. 13 pp. Invited talk given at Zimanyi 75 Memorial Workshop on Hadronic and Quark Matter, Budapest, Hungary, 2-4 Jul. 2007; reviewed and published versio

Plasmons, plasminos and Landau damping in a quasiparticle model of the quark-gluon plasma

A phenomenological quasiparticle model is surveyed for 2+1 quark flavors and compared with recent lattice QCD results. Emphasis is devoted to the effects of plasmons, plasminos and Landau damping. It is shown that thermodynamic bulk quantities, known at zero chemical potential, can uniquely be mapped towards nonzero chemical potential by means of a thermodynamic consistency condition and a stationarity condition.Comment: Sep. 2007. 13 pp. Invited talk given at Zimanyi 75 Memorial Workshop on Hadronic and Quark Matter, Budapest, Hungary, 2-4 Jul. 2007; reviewed and published versio

Cross-over versus first-order phase transition in holographic gravity-single-dilaton models of QCD thermodynamics

A dilaton potential is adjusted to recently confirmed lattice QCD thermodynamics data in the temperature range $(0.7 \ldots 3.5) T_c$ where $T_c = 155 \text{MeV}$ is the pseudo-critical temperature. The employed holographic model is based on a gravity--single-field dilaton dual. We discuss conditions for enforcing (for the pure gluon plasma) or avoiding (for the QCD quark-gluon plasma) a first-order phase transition, but still keeping a softest point (minimum of sound velocity).Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Gluon Emission of Heavy Quarks: Dead Cone Effect

The lowest-order induced soft gluon radiation processes of heavy quarks have been analyzed to quantify the dead cone effect. This effect is most likely expected to suppress significantly the energy loss of charm quarks passing an amorphous color-neutral deconfined medium, as has been concluded from recent experiments at RHIC

Impact of Four-Quark Condensates on In-Medium Effects of Hadrons

Spectral properties of hadrons in nuclear matter are treated in the framework of QCD sum rules. The influence of the ambient strongly interacting medium is encoded in various condensates. Especially, the structure of different four-quark condensates and their density dependencies in light quark systems are exemplified for the omega meson and the nucleon.Comment: Contribution to Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum VII, 02.-07.09.2006, Ponta Delgada, Portuga