Near Zone Hydrodynamics of AdS/CFT Jet Wakes

Abstract

The energy-momentum tensor of a supersonic heavy quark jet moving through a strongly-coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM plasma is analyzed in terms of first-order Navier-Stokes hydrodynamics. We focus on the near zone ``head'' region close to the heavy quark where deviations from hydrodynamic behavior are expected to be large. For realistic quark velocities, $v=0.99$, we find that the non-hydrodynamical head region is confined at a narrow pancake surrounding the jet with a width $\sim 1/T$ and transverse radius $\sim 3/T$. Outside this jet head region, the jet induced stress is well approximated by Navier-Stokes hydrodynamics.

Comments: 4 pages, 5 figures, Presented at Quark Matter 2008: 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus Nucleus Collisions (QM 2008), Jaipur, India, 4-10 Feb 2008