Heavy ion collisions and AdS/CFT

Abstract

We review some recent applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence to heavy ion collisions including a calculation of the jet quenching parameter in N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory and quarkonium suppression from velocity scaling of the screening length for a heavy quark-antiquark pair. We also briefly discuss differences and similarities between QCD and N=4 Super-Yang-Mills theory.

Comments: Plenary talk given at Quark Matter 2006, Shanghai, China, 14-20 Nov 2006; to appear in the conference proceeding