TASI lectures: Collisions in anti-de Sitter space, conformal symmetry, and holographic superconductors

In four lectures, delivered at the TASI 2010 summer school, I cover selected topics in the application of the gauge-string duality to nuclear and condensed matter physics. On the nuclear side, I focus on multiplicity estimates from trapped surfaces in AdS_5, and on the consequences of conformal symmetry for relativistic hydrodynamics. On the condensed matter side, I explain the fermion response to the zero-temperature limit of p-wave holographic superconductors.