Ever since extremely fast hydrodynamization has been demonstrated in heavy ion collisions the understanding of the very early non-equilbrium stage of such collisions has been a topic of intense research. We use the gauge/string duality to model the creation of a strongly coupled Quark-Gluon plasma in a non-conformal gauge theory with different phase transitions. The non-trivial equation of state and the presence of a critical point dramatically change the evolution of planar shockwaves.
Ankita Budhraja, Juraj Klaric, Johannes Michel, Tanjona R. Rabemananjara