Nonlocal probes of thermalization in holographic quenches with spectral methods

Understand

We describe the application of pseudo-spectral methods to problems of holographic thermal quenches of relevant couplings in strongly coupled gauge theories.

• We focus on quenches of a fermionic mass term in a strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma, and the subsequent equilibration of the system.
• From the dual gravitational perspective, we study the gravitational collapse of a massive scalar field in asymptotically anti-de Sitter geometry with a prescribed boundary condition for its non-normalizable mode.
• Access to the full background geometry of the gravitational collapse allows for the study of nonlocal probes of the thermalization process.