Holograms and their Standard Models: DSSYK_∞ and the ‘t Hooft Model

Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

IAS Special Physics Seminar
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall (IAS) & Zoom
Topic: Holograms and their Standard Models: DSSYK_∞ and the ‘t Hooft Model
Speaker: Leonard Susskind
Affiliation: Institute for Advanced Study
Date: May 26, 2026

Heavy quarks propagating through quark-gluon plasma provide a unique, experimentally accessible opportunity to study the real-time dynamics of QCD in its strongly coupled regime. In the infinite heavy quark mass limit, the momentum change probability of a heavy quark in a thermal environment is characterized by the thermal expectation value of a Wilson loop featuring two long antiparallel timelike Wilson lines (along the direction defined by the heavy quark 4-velocity) with Wightman operator ordering. I will discuss the formulation of this Wilson loop, the KMS condition it satisfies, its calculation at weak coupling (in QCD and in N=4 SYM), and its calculation at strong coupling (in N=4 SYM via AdS/CFT). Time permitting, I will discuss these calculations in the context of heavy quark phenomenology in heavy ion collisions.

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