The Effect of Vorticity on QGP Thermodynamics

Currently there is intense interest in the properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma produced in peripheral collisions of heavy ions at various facilities, such as the RHIC. In particular, it is essential to understand the difference between such plasmas and their more readily understood counterparts produced in nearly central collisions. The differences arise primarily from the intense magnetic and vorticity fields generated in the QGP in the peripheral case. It has been argued that the magnetic fields might have a profound effect on QGP thermodynamics. Here we will argue, using a gauge-gravity model incorporating the recently proposed holographic vorticity bound, that vorticity also has important consequences for the plasma thermodynamics, in particular, for the entropy density at a given impact energy. A crucial point in our analysis is the need to determine the fate of bulk gravitational parameters when the duality translates them to the boundary.