Heavy ion collisions, viscosity, and black holes

by Dam T. Son (University of Washington, Seattle)

Wednesday 10 Sept 2008, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Theory Conference Room (CERN)

Viscosity is a very old concept which was introduced to physics by Navier in the 19th century. However, in strongly coupled systems viscosity is extremely difficult to compute ab initio. In this talk I will describe some recent surprising developments in string theory which allow one to easily compute the viscosity in a class of strongly interacting relativistic quantum field theories. I will describe efforts to measure the viscosity and other physical properties of the quark gluon plasma created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

Slides Son.pdf