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(14.07.) An instability in AdS

Umut Gürsoy (Utrecht)

14.07.2016 at 16:15 

A gravitational solution is dynamically unstable if the spectrum of quasi-normal modes contain modes with positive imaginary eigenvalues. I will discuss Asymptotically AdS solutions in Einstein-scalar gravity which may or may not have dynamical instabilities depending on the IR asymptotics of the scalar potential. In particular I will present a model with a dynamically stable and a dynamically unstable black-brane solution among other branches. Fine tuning initial conditions in this model one obtains a fully non-linear evolution in time that corresponds to a curious two-step thermalization process: the time dependent solution first evolves into a thermodynamically metastable but dynamically unstable branch and then it decays into the global minimum. Quasi-normal modes give an approximate but accurate description of this evolution. Finally I will discuss our findings in view of the "correlated stability conjecture" of Gubser and Mitra and applications to thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma.

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