Viscosity bound violation in higher derivative gravity

Journal Article · Sun Jun 15 04:00:00 EDT 2008 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.77.126006· OSTI ID:21205235

Brigante, Mauro; Hong, Liu; Myers, Robert C; Shenker, Stephen; Yaida, Sho ^[1]

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1. Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)

Motivated by the vast string landscape, we consider the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio in conformal field theories dual to Einstein gravity with curvature square corrections. After field redefinitions these theories reduce to Gauss-Bonnet gravity, which has special properties that allow us to compute the shear viscosity nonperturbatively in the Gauss-Bonnet coupling. By tuning of the coupling, the value of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio can be adjusted to any positive value from infinity down to zero, thus violating the conjectured viscosity bound. At linear order in the coupling, we also check consistency of four different methods to calculate the shear viscosity, and we find that all of them agree. We search for possible pathologies associated with this class of theories violating the viscosity bound.

• OSTI ID: 21205235
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 12 Vol. 77; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CONFORMAL INVARIANCE
CORRECTIONS
COUPLING
DENSITY
ENTROPY
GRAVITATION
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
VISCOSITY