Finite-temperature and density holographic QCD in the limit of large number of colors and flavors

by Prof. Keijo Kajantie (Helsinki Institute of Physics)

Monday 14 Oct 2013, 13:30 → 15:00 Europe/Stockholm

122:026

A fundamental quantity in finite temperature and density QCD is its pressure p(T,mu). It can be computed at very large T or density in perturbation theory, but the interesting region of deconfining or chiral or possibly other type phase transitions is only accessible by nonperturbative means. Lattice Monte Carlo at zero density is a method of choice, but introducing flavors is numerically very expensive and finite density leads to a complex action nonutilizable in simulations. The purpose of this talk is to describe an attempt to use holography to derive p(T,mu) and associated phase structure. The framework is 5-dimensional gravity with AdS5 boundary, a dilaton to describe confinement and gluons at large Nc, a tachyon to describe chiral symmetry effects and fundamental quarks at large Nf and a 5d density to describe net density of quarks. This is not a definite prediction of how finite T and density QCD will behave, rather a framework showing how holography can describe various subtle dynamical effects. Of particular interest is the T->0 limit, which relates to recent work on ground states of condensed matter systems, here those with AdS2xR3 symmetry.