2007/12/31 by R. Baier, P. Romatschke, D. T. Son +2 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-th #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2008/04/100
published as JHEP0804:100,2008 · 32 pages, 1 figure; v2: references added; v3: typos corrected
arxiv created 2008/07/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We consider second-order viscous hydrodynamics in conformal field theories at finite temperature. We show that conformal invariance imposes powerful constraints on the form of the second-order corrections. By matching to the AdS/CFT calculations of correlators, and to recent results for Bjorken flow obtained by Heller and Janik, we find three (out of five) second-order transport coefficients in the strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We also discuss how these new coefficents can arise within the kinetic theory of weakly coupled conformal plasmas. We point out that the Mueller-Israel-Stewart theory, often used in numerical simulations, does not contain all allowed second-order terms and, frequently, terms required by conformal invariance.