Hydrodynamic behaviour and phase transitions of a non-conformal plasma

Abstract

The AdS-CFT correspondence has provided new opportunities to study dynamics in strongly coupled theories. In particular, boost-invariant solutions allow us to model heavy-ion collisions. In this project I will give an overview of the duality, construct an holographic model and study its thermodynamical structure and phase transitions. Then, I will consider a boost-invariant plasma and study if its microscopic evolution, given holographi cally, is well described by hydrodynamics. Finally I ask whether phase transitions can be probed in this context.