Asymmetric Collision of Two Shock Waves in AdS_5

Understand

We consider high energy collisions of two shock waves in AdS_5 as a model of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions in the boundary theory.

• We first calculate the graviton field produced in the collisions in the NLO and NNLO approximations, corresponding to three- and four-graviton exchanges with the shock waves.
• We then consider the asymmetric limit where the energy density in one shock wave is much higher than in the other one.
• In the boundary theory this setup corresponds to proton-nucleus collisions, with the nucleus being the denser of the two shock waves and the proton being the less dense one.