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arXiv · 0712.2221

Collisions with Black Holes and Deconfined Plasmas

Aaron J. Amsel·Donald Marolf·Amitabh Virmani
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Abstract

We use AdS/CFT to investigate i) high energy collisions with balls of deconfined plasma surrounded by a confining phase and ii) the rapid localized heating of a deconfined plasma. Both of these processes are dual to collisions with black holes, where they result in the nucleation of a new "arm" of the horizon reaching out in the direction of the incident object. We study the resulting non-equilibrium dynamics in a universal limit of the gravitational physics which may indicate universal behavior of deconfined plasmas at large N_c. Process (i) produces "virtual" arms of the plasma ball, while process (ii) can nucleate surprisingly large bubbles of a higher temperature phase.

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Aaron J. Amsel, Donald Marolf, Amitabh Virmani. 2007-12-13. Collisions with Black Holes and Deconfined Plasmas. https://doi.org/10.1088/1126-6708%2F2008%2F04%2F025

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