Photon and dilepton production in supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma

Journal article

By weakly gauging one of the U(1) subgroups of the R-symmetry group, script N sign = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory can be coupled to electromagnetism, thus allowing a computation of photon production and related phenomena in a QCD-like non-Abelian plasma at both weak and strong coupling. We compute photon and dilepton emission rates from finite temperature script N sign = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma both perturbatively at weak coupling to leading order, and non-perturbatively at strong coupling using the AdS/CFT duality conjecture. Comparison of the photo-emission spectra for script N sign = 4 plasma at weak coupling, script N sign = 4 plasma at strong coupling, and QCD at weak coupling reveals several systematic trends which we discuss. We also evaluate the electric conductivity of script N sign = 4 plasma in the strong coupling limit, and to leading-log order at weak coupling. Current-current spectral functions in the strongly coupled theory exhibit hydrodynamic peaks at small frequency, but otherwise show no structure which could be interpreted as well-defined thermal resonances in the high-temperature phase. © SISSA 2006.

Authors: Huot, S; Kovtun, P; Moore, G; Starinets, A; Yaffe, L

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: JOURNAL OF HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS
• Volume: 2006
• Issue: 12
• Pages: 015-015
• Publication date: 2006-12-01
• DOI: 10.1088/1126-6708/2006/12/015
• EISSN: 1029-8479
• ISSN: 1029-8479
• Language: English
• Keywords: Thermal Field Theory; AdS-CFT Correspondence; Supersymmetric gauge theory