Paper detail

Radiation and a dynamical UV/IR connection in AdS/CFT

We compute holographically the expectation value of the energy density sourced, in a strongly-coupled CFT, by a quark with large but finite mass (or equivalently, small but finite Compton radius) undergoing arbitrary motion. The resulting gluonic profile has two surprising features in the far region. First, besides the expected radiation, it contains a component that is attributable to the `intrinsic' or `near' field of the quark, and nevertheless falls off as the square of the distance. Second, even at distances much larger than the size of the quark, it differs from the profile set up by a pointlike quark. We explain how this second feature provides a useful case study for the UV/IR connection in a dynamical setting. We also examine some specific sample trajectories, including uniform circular motion and harmonic oscillation, where features such as the extent of the region with negative energy are found to vary with the quark mass.