Sonic booms and diffusion wakes generated by a heavy quark in thermal AdS/CFT

Abstract

We evaluate the Poynting vector generated by a heavy quark moving through a thermal state of N=4 gauge theory using AdS/CFT. A significant diffusion wake is observed as well as a Mach cone. We discuss the ratio of the energy going into sound modes to the energy coming in from the wake.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, revtex