The shear viscosity in anisotropic phases

Sachin Jain, Rickmoy Samanta, Sandip P. Trivedi

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56 Scopus citations

Abstract

We construct anisotropic black brane solutions and analyse the behaviour of some of their metric perturbations. These solutions correspond to field theory duals in which rotational symmetry is broken due an externally applied, spatially constant, force. We find, in several examples, that when the anisotropy is sufficiently big compared to the temperature, some components of the viscosity tensor can become very small in units of the entropy density, parametrically violating the KSS bound. We obtain an expression relating these components of the viscosity, in units of the entropy density, to a ratio of metric components at the horizon of the black brane. This relation is generally valid, as long as the forcing function is translationally invariant, and it directly connects the parametric violation of the bound to the anisotropy in the metric at the horizon. Our results suggest the possibility that such small components of the viscosity tensor might also arise in anisotropic strongly coupled fluids found in nature.

Original languageEnglish
Article number28
JournalJournal of High Energy Physics
Volume2015
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Oct 2015
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, The Author(s).

Keywords

  • AdS-CFT Correspondence
  • Holography and condensed matter physics (AdS/CMT)
  • Holography and quark-gluon plasmas

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