The sound of strongly coupled field theories: quasinormal modes in Anti de Sitter space

by Prof. Karl Landsteiner (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spanien)

Tuesday 19 Oct 2010, 17:15 → 18:15 Europe/Berlin

Auditorium

Strongly coupled gauge theories often allow a dual description in terms of a higher dimensional theory of gravity in Anti de Sitter space. The most well known example of this is the description of N=4 supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions through supergravity on five dimensional AdS. At finite temperature the dual gravity description involves black holes. Quasinormal modes are the damped eigen modes of linearized wave equations in a black hole geometry. I will review the role quasinormal modes play in the context of the gauge/gravity duality, highlighting in particular applications to the hydrodynamics of the strongly coupled quark gluon plasma and possible applications to condensed matter systems such as holographic superconductors.