Universal relaxation in quark-gluon plasma at strong coupling

Abstract

We use top-down gauge theory/string theory correspondence to compute relaxation rates in strongly coupled nonconformal gauge theory plasma. We compare models with difference mechanisms of breaking the scale invariance: "hard breaking" (by relevant operators) and "soft breaking" (by marginal operators). We find that the thermalization time of the transverse traceless fluctuations of the stress-energy tensor is rather insensitive to the mechanisms of breaking the scale invariance over a large range of the scale-breaking parameter $\delta=\frac 13-c_s^2$. We comment on the relevance of the results to QCD quark-gluon plasma.