Photon and dilepton production in supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma

Abstract

By weakly gauging one of the U(1) subgroups of the R-symmetry group, N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory can be coupled to electromagnetism, thus allowing a computation of photon production and related phenomena in a QCD-like non-Abelian plasma at both weak and strong coupling. We compute photon and dilepton emission rates from finite temperature N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma both perturbatively at weak coupling to leading order, and non-perturbatively at strong coupling using the AdS/CFT duality conjecture. Comparison of the photo-emission spectra for N=4 plasma at weak coupling, N=4 plasma at strong coupling, and QCD at weak coupling reveals several systematic trends which we discuss. We also evaluate the electric conductivity of N=4 plasma in the strong coupling limit, and to leading-log order at weak coupling. Current-current spectral functions in the strongly coupled theory exhibit hydrodynamic peaks at small frequency, but otherwise show no structure which could be interpreted as well-defined thermal resonances in the high-temperature phase.