Various Time-Scales of Relaxation

Abstract

Via gauge-gravity duality, relaxation of far-from-equilibrium initial states in a strongly coupled gauge theory has been investigated. In the system we consider in this paper there are two ways where the state under study can deviate from its equilibrium: anisotropic pressure and time-dependent expectation value of a scalar operator with \Delta=3. In the gravity theory, this system corresponds to Einstein's general relativity with a non-trivial metric, including the anisotropy function, coupled to a massive scalar matter field. We study the effect of different initial configurations for scalar field and anisotropy function on physical processes such as thermalization, i.e. time evolution of event horizon, equilibration of the expectation value of scalar operator and isotropization. We also discuss time ordering of these time-scales.