Viscosity in Strongly Interacting Quantum Field Theories from Black Hole Physics

2004/05/31 by Pavel Kovtun, P. Kovtun, D. Son +3 · 1 voice · 45 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.94.111601

published as Phys.Rev.Lett. 94 (2005) 111601 · 9 pages, title changed, appendix moved into the main text

arxiv created 2005/03/17 · openalex publication_date 2005/03/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The ratio of shear viscosity to volume density of entropy can be used to characterize how close a given fluid is to being perfect. Using string theory methods, we show that this ratio is equal to a universal value of variant Planck's over 2pi/4pik(B) for a large class of strongly interacting quantum field theories whose dual description involves black holes in anti-de Sitter space. We provide evidence that this value may serve as a lower bound for a wide class of systems, thus suggesting that black hole horizons are dual to the most ideal fluids.

Citations

• Universal upper bound on the entropy-to-energy ratio for bounded systems
• Black Holes and Entropy
• The four laws of black hole mechanics
• Particle creation by black holes
• The world as a hologram

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Discussions

• #AdS/CFT correspondence can turn a strong coupled #QFT into a weak coupled #StringTheory. This predicted the viscosity of a coupled fluid given by η/s ≥ ħ/4πk ≈ 0.08 close to quark-gluon plasma #QGP ( [bsky, 5 points, 3 comments]

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• Cosmological implications of the minimum viscosity principle
• Shear Viscosity to Entropy Density for a Black Brane in 5-dimensional Einstein-Yang-Mills Gravity
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• Transport coefficients associated to black holes on the brane: analysis of the shear viscosity-to-entropy density ratio