Nuclear Theory/RIKEN seminar

A remarkable observation from RHIC and the LHC is that the quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions behaves as a strongly coupled and nearly ideal liquid. Data also suggests that the debris produced by proton-nucleus collisions can also behave as a liquid. Understanding the dynamics responsible for the rapid equilibration of such tiny droplets is an outstanding problem. In recent years holography has emerged as a powerful tool to study non-equilibrium phenomena, mapping challenging quantum dynamics onto the classical dynamics of gravitational fields in one higher dimension. In the dual gravitational description the process of quark-gluon plasma formation and equilibration maps onto the process of gravitational collapse and black hole formation. I will describe how one can apply techniques and lessons learned from numerical relativity to holography and present recent work on holographic models of high energy collisions and the applicability of hydrodynamics to tiny droplets of quark-gluon plasma.