Title: A holographic view of the hydrodynamisation of quark-gluon plasma

Speaker: Wilke van der Schee (MIT)

Abstract: This talk aims to give an accessible introduction and overview of employing holography to better understand the creation of quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions. Holography is a framework, originating from string theory, where it was realised that the dynamics of temperature and entropy present on black hole horizons is precisely described by certain infinitely strongly interacting quantum field theories. We will apply this framework in a setting where a black hole forms from two colliding `holographic nuclei’, and show that the resulting plasma is very quickly described by viscous relativistic hydrodynamics, a process now called hydrodynamisation. Lastly, we give some updates on recent extensions to Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, which can mimic quantum field theories with a finite coupling constant.