Enhanced thermal photon and dilepton production in strongly coupled N=4 SYM plasma in strong magnetic field

Understand

We calculate the DC conductivity tensor of strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills (SYM) plasma in a presence of a strong external magnetic field B>>T^2 by using its gravity dual and employing both the RG flow approach and membrane paradigm which give the same results.

• We find that, since the magnetic field B induces anisotropy in the plasma, different components of the DC conductivity tensor have different magnitudes depending on whether its components are in the direction of the magnetic field B.
• In particular, we find that a component of the DC conductivity tensor in the direction of the magnetic field B increases linearly with B while the other components (which are not in the direction of the magnetic field B) are independent of it.
• These results are consistent with the lattice computations of the DC conductivity tensor of the QCD plasma in an external magnetic field B.