Gravitational infall in the hard wall model B. Craps a,b , E. J. Lindgren a,c , A. Taliotis a , J. Vanhoof a , H. Zhang a a Theoretische Natuurkunde, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and International Solvay Institutes, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium b Laboratoire de Physique Th´ eorique, Ecole Normale Sup´ erieure, 24 rue Lhomond, F-75231 Paris Cedex 05, France c Physique Th´ eorique et Math´ ematique, Universit´ e Libre de Bruxelles, Campus Plaine C.P. 231, B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium Ben.Craps@vub.ac.be, ejonathanlindgren@gmail.com, Anastasios.Taliotis@vub.ac.be, Joris.Vanhoof@vub.ac.be, hzhang@vub.ac.be ABSTRACT An infalling shell in the hard wall model provides a simple holographic model for energy injection in a confining gauge theory. Depending on its parameters, a scalar shell either collapses into a large black brane, or scatters between the hard wall and the anti-de Sitter boundary. In the scattering regime, we find numerical solutions that keep oscillating for as long as we have followed their evolution, and we provide an analytic argument that shows that a black brane can never be formed. This provides examples of states in infinite-volume field theory that never thermalize. We find that the field theory expectation value of a scalar operator keeps oscillating, with an amplitude that undergoes modulation. arXiv:1406.1454v1 [hep-th] 5 Jun 2014