Quark-Hadron Transition and Entanglement

The dual holographic description has enjoyed many successes in explaining fundamental properties of the early stages of relativistic heavy ion collisions up to the formation of a minimal-viscosity quark-gluon fluid. However, there have been few attempts to extend its application beyond this stage. Here we explore the prospects for such an extension beyond the time of hadronization. Our discussion makes use of recent insights into the duality of entanglement properties of field theory states in the edge of Anti-de Sitter space and non-trivial topologies of horizons in the bulk, often referred to as ER = EPR duality. We discuss this topic from the point of view of heavy-ion phenomenology, review several relevant concepts, and map out a path toward combining them into a comprehensive, at least semiquantitative description of relativistic heavy ion collisions. We outline possible next steps in this direction.