- 著者
- Hatta Y. Iancu E. Mueller A. H.
- 出版者
- Institute of Physics Publishing
- 雑誌
- Journal of high energy physics (ISSN:11266708)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.2008, no.5, pp.37, 2008-05
- 被引用文献数
- 101 106
Within the framework of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we study the timeevolution of an energetic R-current propagating through a finite temperature, stronglycoupled, N = 4 SYM plasma and propose a physical picture for our results. In thispicture, the current splits into a pair of massless partons, which then evolve via successivebranchings, in such a way that energy is quasi-democratically divided among the productsof a branching. We point out a duality between the transverse size of the partonic systemproduced through branching and the radial distance traveled by the dual Maxwell wave inthe AdS geometry. For a time-like current, the branching occurs already in the vacuum,where it gives rise to a system of low-momentum partons isotropically distributed in thetransverse plane. But at finite temperature, the branching mechanism is modified by themedium, in that the rate for parton splitting is enhanced by the transfer of transversemomentum from the partons to the plasma. This mechanism, which controls the partonenergy loss, is sensitive to the energy density in the plasma, but not to the details of thethermal state. We compute the lifetime of the current for various kinematical regimes andprovide physical interpretations for other, related, quantities, so like the meson screeninglength, the drag force, or the trailing string, that were previously computed via AdS/CFTtechniques.