Cavitation in strongly coupled field theories

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Paul Romatschke
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Kern- und Elementarteilchenphysik, Quantenmechanik, Relativitätstheorie, Felder
• Förderung: Förderung in 2011
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 192566851

Cavitation corresponds to the formation of bubbles in flowing liquids and is commonly encountered in everyday devices such as pumps, propellers and control valves. For water, cavitation occurs when the fluid pressure falls below its vapor pressure. In the much more extreme context of heavy-ion collisions experiments, which (somewhat surprisingly) are very well described by fluid dynamics, it has been suggested that the fluid pressure can fall below the vacuum pressure, indicating a generalized version of cavitation could occur. This conclusion is tentative, however, because the Navier-Stokes equation is known to break down for relativistic situations such as those encountered in heavy-ion collisions. Gauge/gravity duality offers the possibility of calculating the behavior of the pressure exactly, e.g. directly from quantum field theory at strong coupling, without having to resort to the relativistic Navier-Stokes equation as an intermediate step (albeit for theories different than QCD). The main aim of the proposed research is to study gravity duals of a scenario for which the relativistic Navier-Stokes equation would predict cavitation, and compare the pressure from fluid dynamics to the exact (quantum field theoretical) result. The outcome of this comparison would have implication for the theory of relativistic fluid dynamics, the modelling of heavy-ion collisions and possibly cosmology.

• DFG-Verfahren: Sachbeihilfen