Whatever happened to AdS/CFT and the Quark Gluon Plasma?

[John86]

Nice posting by Bee Hossenfelder on her Blog !..

http://backreaction.blogspot.nl/2013/09/whatever-happened-to-adscft-and-quark.html

A decade ago, the AdS/CFT correspondence was celebrated as a possible description of the quark gluon plasma. RHIC measurements of heavy ion collisions at that time showed a surprisingly small viscosity that lead to a revision of the previous models. Excitingly, a small viscosity appears naturally in the gauge-theory dual of the AdS/CFT correspondence, nevermind that QCD is neither conformal nor supersymmetric. This development was all the more welcome as it served to demonstrate that string theory is not useless, as critics claimed, but that it can provide insights which improve our understanding of physical processes in the real world.

 

[atyy]

There are very informative remarks too by Andreas Karch and Thomas Schaefer in the comments section of http://backreaction.blogspot.nl/2013/09/whatever-happened-to-adscft-and-quark.html.

 

[atyy]

Andreas Karch expanded on his remarks in a guest post at http://motls.blogspot.com/2013/09/guest-blog-on-applications-of-holography.html.