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Holographic thermalization with chemical potential

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Abstract

We study the thermalization of a strongly coupled quantum field theory in the presence of a chemical potential. More precisely, using the holographic prescription, we calculate non-local operators such as two point function, Wilson loop and entanglement entropy in a time-dependent background that interpolates between AdS d+1 and AdS d+1-Reissner-Nordström for d = 3, 4. We find that it is the entanglement entropy that thermalizes the latest and thus sets a time-scale for equilibration in the field theory. We study the dependence of the thermalization time on the probe length and the chemical potential. We find an interesting non-monotonic behavior. For a fixed small value of Tℓ and small values of μ/T the thermalization time decreases as we increase μ/T, thus the plasma thermalizes faster. For large values of μ/T the dependence changes and the thermalization time increases with increasing μ/T. On the other hand, if we increase the value of (Tℓ) this non-monotonic behavior becomes less pronounced and eventually disappears indicating two different regimes for the physics of thermalization: non-monotonic dependence of the thermalization time on the chemical potential for Tℓ ≪ 1 and monotonic for Tℓ ≫ 1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Colima, Bernal Diaz del Castillo 340, Colima, Mexico

    Elena Caceres

  2. Theory Group, Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Elena Caceres & Arnab Kundu

  3. Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106-4030, USA

    Arnab Kundu

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  1. Elena Caceres
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Correspondence to Elena Caceres.

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ArXiv ePrint: 1205.2354

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Caceres, E., Kundu, A. Holographic thermalization with chemical potential. J. High Energ. Phys. 2012, 55 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2012)055

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