Holographic melting and related properties of mesons in a quark-gluon plasma

We analyze mesons at finite temperature in a chiral, confining string dual. The temperature dependence of low-spin as well as high-spin meson masses is shown to exhibit a pattern familiar from the lattice. Furthermore, we find the dissociation temperature of mesons as a function of their spin, showing that at a fixed quark mass, mesons with larger spins dissociate at lower temperatures. The Goldstone bosons associated with chiral symmetry breaking are shown to disappear above the chiral symmetry restoration temperature. Finally, we show that holographic considerations imply that large-spin mesons do not experience drag effects when moving through the quark-gluon plasma. They do, however, have a maximum velocity for fixed spin, beyond which they dissociate.