Numerical Simulations of Asymptotically AdS Spacetimes

In this dissertation, we introduce a numerical scheme to construct asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes with Lorentzian signature, focusing on cases that preserve five-dimensional axisymmetry. We study the field theories that are dual to these spacetimes by appealing to the AdS/CFT correspondence in the regime where the gravity dual is completely described by Einstein gravity. The numerical scheme is based on generalized harmonic evolution, and we begin by obtaining initial data defined on some Cauchy hypersurface. For the study described in this dissertation, we use a scalar field to source deviations from pure AdS5, and obtain data that correspond to highly deformed black holes. We evolve this initial data forward in time, and follow the subsequent ringdown. What is novel about this study is that the initial horizon geometry cannot be considered a small perturbation of the final static horizon, and hence we are probing an initial non-linear phase of the evolution of the bulk spacetime. On the boundary, we find that the dual CFT stress tensor behaves like that of a thermalized N = 4 SYM fluid. We find that the equation of state of this fluid is consistent with conformal invariance, and that its transport coefficients match those previously calculated for an N = 4 SYM fluid via holographic methods. Modulo a brief transient that is numerical in nature, this matching appears to hold from the initial time onwards. We transform these solutions computed in global AdS onto a Minkowski piece of the boundary, and examine the temperature of the corresponding fluid flows. Under this transformation, the spatial profile of temperature at the initial time resembles a Lorentz-flattened pancake centered at the origin of Minkowski space. By interpreting the direction along which the data is flattened as the beam-line direction, our initial data can be thought of as approximating a head-on heavy ion collision at its moment of impact. iii