Rapid Thermalization by Baryon Injection in Gauge/Gravity Duality

Abstract

Using the AdS/CFT correspondence for strongly coupled gauge theories, we calculate thermalization of mesons caused by a time-dependent change of a baryon number chemical potential. On the gravity side, the thermalization corresponds to a horizon formation on the probe flavor brane in the AdS throat. Since heavy ion collisions are locally approximated by a sudden change of the baryon number chemical potential, we discuss implication of our results to RHIC and LHC experiments, to find a rough estimate of rather rapid thermalization time-scale t_{th} < 1 [fm/c]. We also discuss universality of our analysis against varying gauge theories.

Comments: 9 pages, 7 figures. v2: minor clarifications, version to appear in PRD