R2R^2 curvature-squared corrections on drag force

The effect of finite-coupling corrections to the drag force on a moving heavy quark in the Super Yang-Mills plasma is investigated. These corrections are related to curvature-squared corrections in the corresponding gravity dual. The results are compared with the dual gauge theory. It is shown that curvature-squared corrections affect the drag force. It is shown that corrections to the drag force depend on the velocity of the heavy quark. The diffusion coefficient of non-relativistic heavy quarks is calculated from the drag force. In addition, we also calculate the drag force on a moving heavy quark in the Gauss-Bonnet background.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, published version in JHE

Jets in a strongly coupled anisotropic plasma

In this paper, we study the dynamics of the light quark jet moving through the static, strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$, anisotropic plasma with and without charge. The light quark is presented by a point-like initial condition falling string in the context of the AdS/CFT. We calculate the stopping distance of the light quark in the anisotropic medium and compare it with its isotropic value. By studying the falling string in the beam direction and transverse direction, we find that the jet quenching increases in both directions. Although, the enhancement of quenching is larger in the beam direction. Also, the suppression of stopping distance is more prominent when the anisotropic plasma have the same temperature as the isotropic plasma.Comment: Minor misprints corrected, some references added, and some figures change

Towards a holographic quark-hadron continuity

We study dense nuclear and quark matter within a single microscopic approach, namely the holographic Sakai-Sugimoto model. Nuclear matter is described via instantons in the bulk, and we show that instanton interactions are crucial for a continuous connection of chirally broken and chirally symmetric phases. The continuous path from nuclear to quark matter includes metastable and unstable stationary points of the potential, while the actual chiral phase transition remains of first order, as in earlier approximations. We show that the model parameters can be chosen to reproduce low-density properties of nuclear matter and observe a non-monotonic behavior of the speed of sound as a function of the baryon chemical potential, as suggested by constraints from QCD and astrophysics.Comment: 28+19 pages, 5 figures; v2: clarifications and references added, version to appear in JHE