2008/04/30 by Robert C. Myers, Robert C Myers, Aninda Sinha · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Coupling (piping) #Dispersion relation #Group velocity #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Holography #Meson #Momentum (technical analysis) #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quark–gluon plasma #Quasiparticle #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2008/06/052
published as JHEP 0806:052,2008 · 42 pages, 23 figures, v2: minor changes, references added, v3: minor changes, references added, final version
arxiv created 2008/06/09 · openalex publication_date 2008/06/13 · arxiv updated 2014/11/18 · openalex created_date 2017/02/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We use holographic techniques to study meson quasiparticles moving through a thermal plasma in N=2 super-Yang-Mills theory, with gauge group SU(Nc) and coupled to Nf flavours of fundamental matter. This holographic approach reliably describes the system at large Nc, large 't Hooft coupling and Nf/Nc<<1. The meson states are destabilized by introducing a small quark density nq. Spectral functions are used to examine the dispersion relations of these quasiparticles. In a low-momentum regime, the quasiparticles approach a limiting velocity which can be significantly less than the speed of light. In this regime, the widths of the quasiparticles also rise dramatically as their momentum approaches a critical value qcrit. While the spectral functions do not display isolated resonances for q>qcrit, the dispersion relations can be extended into this high-momentum regime by studying the dual quasinormal modes. A preliminary qualitative analysis of these modes suggests that the group velocity rises to the speed of light for q>>qcrit.