PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

We use the AdS/CFT conjecture to investigate thermalization in large-N_c N=4Super Yang-Mills plasma in the limit of large but finite 't Hooft coupling. Onthe gravity side, we supplement the type IIB supergravity action by the fullset of O(alpha'^3) operators, which enables us to derive O(lambda^(-3/2))corrections to the emission spectrum of prompt photons in one model ofholographic thermalization. Decreasing the strength of the coupling frominfinity, we observe a qualitative change in the way the photon spectraldensity approaches its thermal limit as a function of the photon energy. Weinterpret this behavior as a sign of the thermalization pattern of the plasmashifting from top/down towards bottom/up already at a coupling strengthlambda~50.