2014/06/30 by Stefano I. Finazzo, Stefano Ivo Finazzo, Jorge Noronha
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #hep-ph #hep-th #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep01(2015)051
30 pages, 13 figures, references added. Revised discussion
openalex publication_date 2015/01/01 · arxiv created 2015/01/07 · arxiv updated 2015/06/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The imaginary part of the heavy quark-antiquark potential experienced by moving heavy quarkonia in strongly coupled plasmas dual to theories of gravity is computed by considering thermal worldsheet fluctuations of the holographic Nambu-Goto string. General results for a wide class of gravity duals are presented and an explicit formula for Im V_QQ is found in the case where the axis of the moving QQ pair has an arbitrary orientation with respect to its velocity in the plasma. These results are applied to the study of heavy quarkonia propagating through a strongly coupled N=4 SYM plasma. Our results indicate that the onset of Im V_QQ decreases with increasing rapidity (though our analysis is limited to slowly moving quarkonia) and that, in general, a QQ pair is more strongly bound if its axis is aligned with its direction of motion through the strongly coupled plasma.