Gauss-Bonnet correction to holographic thermalization: Two-point functions, circular Wilson loops, and entanglement entropy

We study the thermalization of a class of four-dimensional strongly coupled theories dual to a five-dimensional AdS-Vaidya spacetime with Gauss-Bonnet curvature corrections. We probe the thermalization using the two-point functions, the expectation values of circular Wilson loops, and entanglement entropy. When boundary separation is small, we observe that the thermalization times of these observables have weak dependence on the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant α. In addition, the growth rate of entanglement entropy density is nearly volume independent. We also show that a new kind of swallowtail behavior may appear in the thermalization of the two-point function when α is negative and is large enough. At large negative α (α-0.1) the relationship between the critical thermalization time of entanglement entropy and the boundary separation encounters a certain ``phase transition.''