Gravitational collisions and the quark-gluon plasma

This thesis addresses the thermalisation of heavy-ion collisions within the context of the AdS/CFT duality. The first part clarifies the numerical set-up and studies the relaxation of far-from-equilibrium modes in homogeneous systems. Less trivially we then study colliding shock waves and uncover a transparent regime where the strongly coupled shocks initially pass right through each other. Furthermore, in this regime the later plasma relaxation is insensitive to the longitudinal profile of the shock, implying in particular a universal rapidity shape at strong coupling and high collision energies. Lastly, we study radial expansion in a boost-invariant set-up, allowing us to find good agreement with head-on collisions performed at the LHC accelerator. As a secondary goal of this thesis, a special effort is made to clearly expose numerical computations by providing commented Mathematica notebooks for most calculations presented. Furthermore, we provide interpolating functions of the geometries computed, which can be of use in other projects.Comment: PhD thesis, 100 pages, 80 figures. http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/294809 , Mathematica notebooks can be found at sites.google.com/site/wilkevanderschee/phd-thesi

Optical effects related to Keplerian discs orbiting Kehagias-Sfetsos naked singularities

We demonstrate possible optical signatures of the Kehagias-Sfetsos naked singularity spacetimes representing spherically symmetric vacuum solution of the modified Ho\v{r}ava gravity. In such spacetimes, accretion structures significantly different from those present in the standard black hole spacetimes occur due to the "antigravity" effect causing existence of an internal static sphere surrounded by Keplerian discs. We focus our attention on the optical effects related to the Keplerian accretion discs, constructing the optical appearance of the Keplerian discs, the spectral continuum due to their thermal radiation, and spectral profiled lines generated in the innermost parts of such discs. The KS naked singularity signature is strongly encoded in the characteristics of predicted optical effects, especially in the case of the spectral continuum and spectral lines profiled by the strong gravity of the spacetimes, due to the region of the vanishing of the angular velocity gradient influencing the effectivity of the viscosity mechanism. We can conclude that optical signatures of the Kehagias-Sfetsos naked singularities can be well distinguished from the signatures of the standard black holes

Silhouette and spectral line profiles in the special modification of the Kerr black hole geometry generated by quintessential fields

We study optical effects in quintessential Kerr black hole spacetimes corresponding to the limiting case of the equation-of-state parameter $\omega_{q}=-1/3$ of the quintessence. In dependence on the dimensionless quintessential field parameter $c$, we determine the black hole silhouette and the spectral line profiles of Keplerian disks generated in this special quintessential Kerr geometry, representing an extension of the general modifications of the Kerr geometry introduced recently by Ghasemi-Nodehi and Bambi \cite{Gha-Bam:2016:EPJC:}. We demonstrate that due to the influence of the parameter $c$, the silhouette is almost homogeneously enlarged, and the spectral line profiles are redshifted with almost conserved shape

Equilibration and hydrodynamics at strong and weak coupling

We give an updated overview of both weak and strong coupling methods to describe the approach to a plasma described by viscous hydrodynamics, a process now called hydrodynamisation. At weak coupling the very first moments after a heavy ion collision is described by the colour-glass condensate framework, but quickly thereafter the mean free path is long enough for kinetic theory to become applicable. Recent simulations indicate thermalization in a time $t\sim40(\eta/s)^{4/3}/T$ [1], with $T$ the temperature at that time and $\eta/s$ the shear viscosity divided by the entropy density. At (infinitely) strong coupling it is possible to mimic heavy ion collisions by using holography, which leads to a dual description of colliding gravitational shock waves. The plasma formed hydrodynamises within a time of $0.41/T$. A recent extension found corrections to this result for finite values of the coupling, when $\eta/s$ is bigger than the canonical value of $1/4\pi$, which leads to $t\sim(0.41+1.6(\eta/s-1/4\pi))/T$ [2]. Future improvements include the inclusion of the effects of the running coupling constant in QCD.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, talk presented at Quark Matter 2017 (Chicago

Fluctuations of CMBR in accelerating universe

The influence of the observed relict vacuum energy on the fluctuations of CMBR going through cosmological matter condensations is studied in the framework of the Einstein-Strauss-de Sitter vakuola model. It is shown that refraction of light at the matching surface of the vakuola and the expanding Friedman universe can be very important during accelerated expansion of the universe, when the velocity of the matching surface relative to static Schwarzchildian observers becomes relativistic. Relevance of the refraction effect for the temperature fluctuations of CMBR is given in terms of the redshift and the angular extension of the fluctuating region

Coupling constant corrections in a holographic model of heavy ion collisions

We initiate a holographic study of coupling-dependent heavy ion collisions by analysing for the first time the effects of leading-order, inverse coupling constant corrections. In the dual description, this amounts to colliding gravitational shock waves in a theory with curvature-squared terms. We find that at intermediate coupling, nuclei experience less stopping and have more energy deposited near the lightcone. When the decreased coupling results in an 80% larger shear viscosity, the time at which hydrodynamics becomes a good description of the plasma created from high energy collisions increases by 25%. The hydrodynamic phase of the evolution starts with a wider rapidity profile and smaller entropy.Comment: V2: 6 pages, 5 figures. Second-order coupling constant corrections added. Version appeared in PR