Holographic lessons for quark dynamics

Abstract

We give a brief overview of recent results obtained through the gauge/gravity\ncorrespondence, concerning the propagation of a heavy quark in strongly-coupled\nconformal field theories (such as N=4 super-Yang-Mills), both at zero and\nfinite temperature. In the vacuum, we discuss energy loss, radiation damping,\nsignal propagation and radiation-induced fluctuations. In the presence of a\nthermal plasma, our emphasis is on early-time energy loss, screening and\nquark-antiquark evolution after pair creation. Throughout, quark dynamics is\nseen to be efficiently encapsulated in the usual string worldsheet dynamics.\n