Holographic dilepton production in a thermalizing plasma

A bstract We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to determine the out-of-equilibrium production rate of dileptons at rest in strongly coupled Super Yang-Mills plasma. Thermalization is achieved via the gravitational collapse of a thin shell of matter in AdS 5 space and the subsequent formation of a black hole, which we describe in a quasistatic approximation. Prior to thermalization, the dilepton spectral function is observed to oscillate as a function of frequency, but the amplitude of the oscillations decreases when thermal equilibrium is approached. At the same time, we follow the flow of the quasinormal spectrum of the corresponding U(1) vector field towards its equilibrium limit.