Speaker
Dr
Maximilian Attems
(University of Barcelona)
Description
Ever since the discovery of the quark-Gluon plasma (QGP) the location of the critical point in the QCD phase diagram - the end point of the first-order transition between hadron matter and QGP - has been a main research goal for heavy-ion collisions experiments. We use the gauge/gravity duality to study as first a four-dimensional, strongly-coupled gauge theory with a first-order thermal phase transition. Placing the theory on a cylinder in a set of homogeneous, unstable initial states the black branes are afflicted by a Gergory-Laflamme instability. In the dual gauge theory this corresponds to a spinodal instability, which drives parts of the spacetime to locally stable regions. We uncover a new surprising example of the applicability of hydrodynamics to systems with large gradients: We show that the time evolution of the spinodal instability and the static final states are accurately described by second-order hydrodynamics.
Authors
Prof.
David Mateos
(University of Barcelona)
Dr
Jorge Casalderrey-Solana
(University of Oxford)
Dr
Maximilian Attems
(University of Barcelona)
Dr
Miguel Zilhao
(University of Barcelona)
Mr
Miquel Triana
(University of Barcelona)
Dr
Yago Bea
(University of Barcelona)
