The proposed research will focus on developing computational tools to help connect ideas from string theory to experimental results from heavy-ion collisions. In particular, the proposed description of the quark-gluon plasma in terms of the gauge-string duality will be developed into a more quantitatively predictive framework. Collective flows, hard probes, and heavy quarkonium systems will be explored in the context of the gauge-string duality. The results of the proposed research will include explicit computations based on string theory that should be capable of comparison with data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and from the heavy-ion program planned for the Large Hadron Collider.
