English

Black Hole Formation in AdS and Thermalization on the Boundary

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-10-31 v2

Abstract

We investigate black hole formation by a spherically collapsing thin shell of matter in AdS space. This process has been suggested to have a holographic interpretation as thermalization of the CFT on the boundary of the AdS space. The AdS/CFT duality relates the shell in the bulk to an off-equilibrium state of the boundary theory which evolves towards a thermal equilibrium when the shell collapses to a black hole. We use 2-point functions to obtain information about the spectrum of excitations in the off-equilibrium state, and discuss how it characterizes the approach towards thermal equilibrium. The full holographic interpretation of the gravitational collapse would require a kinetic theory of the CFT at strong coupling. We speculate that the kinetic equations should be interpreted as a holographic dual of the equation of motion of the collapsing shell.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9912209,
  title  = {Black Hole Formation in AdS and Thermalization on the Boundary},
  author = {Ulf H. Danielsson and Esko Keski-Vakkuri and Martin Kruczenski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9912209},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

20 pages, 2 figures, uses epsf.sty. v2: References added