  We initiate a holographic study of coupling-dependent heavy ion collisions by
analysing for the first time the effects of leading-order, inverse coupling
constant corrections. In the dual description, this amounts to colliding
gravitational shock waves in a theory with curvature-squared terms. We find
that at intermediate coupling, nuclei experience less stopping and have more
energy deposited near the lightcone. When the decreased coupling results in an
80% larger shear viscosity, the time at which hydrodynamics becomes a good
description of the plasma created from high energy collisions increases by 25%.
The hydrodynamic phase of the evolution starts with a wider rapidity profile
and smaller entropy.
