Degenerate Stars and Gravitational Collapse in AdS/CFT

by Kyriakos Papadodimas

Tuesday 28 Sept 2010, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Theory Conference Room (CERN)

We construct composite CFT operators that are holographically dual to a zero temperature Fermi gas in AdS space. We calculate the effect of the gravitational back-reaction on the radius and the mass of the star using the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations. Ignoring other interactions, we determine the "Chandrasekhar limit" beyond which the degenerate star (presumably) undergoes gravitational collapse towards a black hole. This is interpreted on the boundary as a high density phase transition from a cold baryonic phase to a hot deconfined phase.