Alberto Guijosa

The energy of a moving quark-antiquark pair in an Script N = 4 SYM plasma

We make use of the AdS/CFT correspondence to determine the energy of an external quark-antiquark pair that moves through strongly-coupled thermal = 4 super-Yang-Mills plasma, both in the rest frame of the plasma and in the rest frame of the pair. It is found that the pair feels no drag force, has an energy that reproduces the expected 1/L (or γ/L) behavior at small quark-antiquark separations, and becomes unbound beyond a certain screening length whose velocity-dependence we determine. We discuss the relation between the high-velocity limit of our results and the lightlike Wilson loop proposed recently as a definition of the jet-quenching parameter.

Baryons and string creation from the 5-brane world-volume action

We construct BPS-exact solutions of the world-volume Born-Infeld plus WZW action of a D5-brane in the background of N D3-branes. The non-trivial background metric and RR five-form field strength play a crucial role in the solution. When a D5-brane is dragged across a stack of N D3-branes a bundle of N fundamental strings joining the two types of branes is created, as in the Hanany-Witten effect. Our solutions give a detailed description of this bundle in terms of a D5-brane wrapped on a sphere. We discuss extensions of these solutions which have an interpretation in terms of gauge theory multi-quark states via the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Baryons and flux tubes in confining gauge theories from brane actions

Abstract We study baryon configurations in large N non-supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theories, applying the AdS/CFT correspondence. Using the D5-brane world-volume theory in the near-horizon geometry of non-extremal D3-branes, we find embeddings which describe baryonic states in three-dimensional QCD. In particular, we construct solutions corresponding to a baryon made of N quarks, and study what happens when some fraction v of the total number of quarks are bodily moved to a large spatial separation from the others. The individual clumps of quarks are represented by Born-Infeld string tubes obtained from a D5-brane whose spatial section has topology R × S 4 . They are connected by a confining color flux tube, described by a portion of the fivebrane that runs very close and parallel to the horizon. We find that this flux tube has a tension with a non-trivial v-dependence (not previously obtained by other methods). A similar picture is presented for the four-dimensional case.

On drag forces and jet quenching in strongly-coupled plasmas

We compute the drag force experienced by a heavy quark that moves through plasma in a gauge theory whose dual description involves arbitrary metric and dilaton fields. As a concrete application, we consider the cascading gauge theory at temperatures high above the deconfining scale, where we obtain a drag force with a non-trivial velocity dependence. We compare our results with the jet-quenching parameter for the same theory, and find qualitative agreement between the two approaches. Conversely, we calculate the jet-quenching parameter for = 4 super-Yang-Mills with an R-charge density (or equivalently, a chemical potential), and compare our result with the corresponding drag force.

Drag force in charged N=4 SYM plasma

Following recent developments, we employ the AdS/CFT correspondence to determine the drag force exerted on an external quark that moves through an = 4 super-Yang-Mills plasma with a non-zero R-charge density (or, equivalently, a non-zero chemical potential). We find that the drag force is larger than in the case where the plasma is neutral, but the dependence on the charge is non-monotonic.Following recent developments, we employ the AdS/CFT correspondence to determine the drag force exerted on an external quark that moves through an = 4 super-Yang-Mills plasma with a non-zero R-charge density (or, equivalently, a non-zero chemical potential). We find that the drag force is larger than in the case where the plasma is neutral, but the dependence on the charge is non-monotonic.

Acceleration, energy loss and screening in strongly-coupled gauge theories

We explore various aspects of the motion of heavy quarks in strongly-coupled gauge theories, employing the AdS/CFT correspondence. Building on earlier work by Mikhailov, we study the dispersion relation and energy loss of an accelerating finite-mass quark in = 4 super-Yang-Mills, both in vacuum and in the presence of a thermal plasma. In the former case, we notice that the application of an external force modifies the dispersion relation. In the latter case, we find in particular that when a static heavy quark is accelerated by an external force, its rate of energy loss is initially insensitive to the plasma, and there is a delay before this rate approaches the value derived previously from the analysis of stationary or late-time configurations. Following up on work by Herzog et al., we also consider the evolution of a quark and antiquark as they separate from one another after formation, learning how the AdS/CFT setup distinguishes between the singlet and adjoint configurations, and locating the transition to the stage where the deceleration of each particle is properly accounted for by a constant friction coefficient. Additionally, we examine the way in which the energy of a quark-antiquark pair moving jointly through the plasma scales with the quark mass. We find that the velocity-dependence of the screening length is drastically modified in the ultra-relativistic region, and is comparable with that of the transition distance mentioned above.

Brane-antibrane systems at finite temperature and the entropy of black branes

We consider D-brane--anti-D-brane systems at T > 0. Starting at the closed string vacuum, we argue that a finite temperature leads to the reappearance of open string degrees of freedom. We also show that, at a sufficiently large temperature, the open string vacuum becomes stable. Building upon this observation and previous work by Horowitz, Maldacena and Strominger, we formulate a microscopic brane-antibrane model for the non-extremal black three-brane in ten dimensions (as well as for the black two- and five-branes in eleven dimensions). Under reasonable assumptions, and using known results from the AdS/CFT correspondence, the microscopic entropy agrees with the supergravity result up to a factor of 2p/p+1, with p the dimension of the brane. The negative specific heat and pressure of the black brane have a simple interpretation in terms of brane-antibrane annihilation. We also find in the model states resembling black holes and other lower-dimensional black branes.

Undulating strings and gauge theory waves

Abstract We study some dynamical aspects of the correspondence between strings in AdS space and external heavy quarks in N =4 SYM. Specifically, by examining waves propagating on such strings, we make some plausible (and some surprising) inferences about the time-dependent fields produced by oscillating quarks in the strongly coupled gauge theory. We point out a puzzle regarding energy conservation in the SYM theory. In addition, we perform a similar analysis of the gauge fields produced by a baryon (represented as a D5-brane with string-like extension in AdS space) and compare and contrast with the gauge fields produced by a quark–antiquark pair (represented as a string looping through AdS space).

Quantum Fluctuations and the Unruh effect in strongly-coupled conformal field theories

Through the AdS/CFT correspondence, we study a uniformly accelerated quark in the vacuum of strongly-coupled conformal field theories in various dimensions, and determine the resulting stochastic fluctuations of the quark trajectory. From the perspective of an inertial observer, these are quantum fluctuations induced by the gluonic radiation emitted by the accelerated quark. From the point of view of the quark itself, they originate from the thermal medium predicted by the Unruh effect. We scrutinize the relation between these two descriptions in the gravity side of the correspondence, and show in particular that upon transforming the conformal field theory from Rindler space to the open Einstein universe, the acceleration horizon disappears from the boundary theory but is preserved in the bulk. This transformation allows us to directly connect our calculation of radiation-induced fluctuations in vacuum with the analysis by de Boer et al. of the Brownian motion of a quark that is on average static within a thermal medium. Combining this same bulk transformation with previous results of Emparan, we are also able to compute the stress-energy tensor of the Unruh thermal medium.

Energy loss of gluons, baryons and k-quarks in an = 4 SYM plasma

We consider different types of external color sources that move through a strongly-coupled thermal N = 4 super-Yang-Mills plasma, and calculate, via the AdS/CFT correspondence, the dissipative force (or equivalently, the rate of energy loss) they experi- ence. A bound state of k quarks in the totally antisymmetric representation is found to feel a force with a nontrivial k-dependence. Our result for k=1 (or k = N i 1) agrees at large N with the one obtained recently by Herzog et al. and Gubser, but contains in addition an infinite series of 1/N corrections. The baryon (k = N) is seen to experience no drag. Finally, a heavy gluon is found to be subject to a force which at large N is twice as large as the one experienced by a heavy quark, in accordance with gauge theory expectations.