Holography in Quark-Gluon Plasma and Neutron Stars

Abstract: In this thesis, QCD is studied from three different directions, with one overarching theme: holography. The holographic duality allows certain strongly coupled QFTs to be described in terms of much simpler classical gravity in one dimension more. The first direction from which QCD is studied in this thesis is by examining the effects of an external magnetic field on a particular holographic model of QCD, yielding interesting qualitative insight. The second approach examines how, in the same model, one can describe dense baryonic configurations, providing a new way to study the matter composing neutron stars. Indeed, the equation of state produced in this way is subsequently used to compute several neutron star properties which are observable, or will be in the near future. The last direction contains no holographic computations per se, but does incorporate several qualitative insights from holography into a new heavy ion code called Trajectum. This will in the near future be used to perform a Bayesian analysis, whereby it is hoped that these qualitative insights from holography can be tested on experimental data, to see how well the ideas coming from holography match up with experiment.