Nuclear Physics Seminar

Holographic Thermodynamics

Andy O'Bannon (University of Washington in Seattle)


The AdS/CFT Correspondence gives us analytic control over the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at strong 't Hooft coupling. When the theory lives on a spacetime that is a circle times a 3-sphere we can then study a strongly-coupled gauge theory with a deconfinement transition. We can also introduce matter fields in the fundamental representation: quarks (and their supersymmetric partners). I will describe my work in which we drew the phase diagram for this theory in the plane of quark mass versus temperature. I will especially emphasize the similarities and differences with (large-N) QCD.








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