  We show that a source which radiates in the vacuum of the strongly coupled
N=4 SYM theory produces an energy distribution which, in the supergravity
approximation, has the same space-time pattern as the corresponding classical
distribution: the radiation propagates at the speed of light without
broadening. We illustrate this on the basis of several examples: a small
perturbation propagating down a steady string, a massless particle falling into
AdS_5, and the decay of a time-like wave-packet. A similar observation was made
in Phys. Rev. D81 (2010) 126001 for the case of a rotating string. In all these
cases, the absence of broadening is related to the fact that the energy
backreaction on the boundary arises exclusively from the bulk perturbation at,
or near, the boundary. This is so since bulk sources which propagate in AdS_5
at the speed of light do not generate any energy on the boundary. We interpret
these features as an artifact of the supergravity approximation, which fails to
encode quantum mechanical fluctuations that should be present even in the
strong coupling limit. We argue that such fluctuations should enter the dual
string theory as longitudinal string fluctuations, which are not suppressed at
strong coupling. We heuristically estimate the effects of such fluctuations and
argue that they restore the broadening of the radiation, in agreement with
expectations from both quantum mechanics and the ultraviolet/infrared
correspondence.
