Complexified boost invariance and holographic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

At strong coupling holographic studies have shown that heavy ion collisions do not obey normal boost invariance. Here we study a modified boost invariance through a complex shift in time, and show that this leads to surprisingly good agreement with numerical holographic computations. When including perturbations the agreement becomes even better, both in the hydrodynamic and the far-from-equilibrium regime. One of the main advantages is an analytic formulation of the stress-energy tensor of the longitudinal dynamics of holographic heavy ion collisions.

Comments: 13 pages, 8 figures. v2: minor clarification and updated computation. v3: matches published version, added a table