  We argue for the existence of plasma-balls - meta-stable, nearly homogeneous
lumps of gluon plasma at just above the deconfinement energy density - in a
class of large N confining gauge theories that undergo first order
deconfinement transitions. Plasma-balls decay over a time scale of order N^2 by
thermally radiating hadrons at the deconfinement temperature. In gauge theories
that have a dual description that is well approximated by a theory of gravity
in a warped geometry, we propose that plasma-balls map to a family of
classically stable finite energy black holes localized in the IR. We present a
conjecture for the qualitative nature of large mass black holes in such
backgrounds, and numerically construct these black holes in a particular class
of warped geometries. These black holes have novel properties; in particular
their temperature approaches a nonzero constant value at large mass. Black
holes dual to plasma-balls shrink as they decay by Hawking radiation; towards
the end of this process they resemble ten dimensional Schwarzschild black
holes, which we propose are dual to small plasma-balls. Our work may find
practical applications in the study of the physics of localized black holes
from a dual viewpoint.
