2.2.4 Background Radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.2.5 Fragility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 2.3 Introduction to AdS/CFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 2.3.1 History of String Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 2.3.2 AdS/CFT Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 2.3.3 Motivation for the AdS/CFT Correspondence . . . . . 60 2.3.4 Applications of AdS/CFT to Heavy Ion Collisions . . . 66 2.3.5 Testing the Conjecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 2.4 Outline of Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3 v$_{2}$ vs. R$_{AA}$ as a Constraint on sQGP Dynamics 76 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 3.2 Plot of v$_{2}$ vs. R$_{AA}$ and Failures of Previous Models . . . . . . 79 3.3 Exclusion of Detailed Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.4 Success of the Punch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 4 Elastic, Inelastic, and Path Length Fluctuations in Jet Tomog- raphy at RHIC and LHC 90 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 4.2 Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 4.3 Numerical Results: Parton Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 4.4 Numerical Results: Pions and Electrons . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 4.5 Sensitivity and Imprecision in WHDG . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 ii