On holographic thermalization and gravitational collapse of tachyonic scalar fields

Understand

In this paper we study the thermalization of a spatially homogeneous system in a strongly coupled CFT.

• The non-equilibrium initial state is created by switching on a relevant perturbation in the CFT vacuum during Delta t >= t >= -Delta t.
• Via AdS/CFT, the thermalization process corresponds to the gravitational collapse of a tachyonic scalar field (m^2 = -3) in the Poincare patch of AdS_5.
• In the limit Delta t < 0.02/T, the thermalization time t_T is found to be quantitatively the same as that of a non-equilibrium state created by a marginal perturbation discussed in Ref.