English

Generalised global symmetries in holography: magnetohydrodynamic waves in a strongly interacting plasma

High Energy Physics - Theory 2019-04-29 v3 Strongly Correlated Electrons Nuclear Theory Plasma Physics

Abstract

We begin the exploration of holographic duals to theories with generalised global (higher-form) symmetries. In particular, we focus on the case of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in strongly coupled plasmas by constructing and analysing a holographic dual to a recent, generalised global symmetry-based formulation of dissipative MHD. The simplest holographic dual to the effective theory of MHD that was proposed as a description of plasmas with any equation of state and transport coefficients contains dynamical graviton and two-form gauge field fluctuations in a magnetised black brane background. The dual field theory, which is closely related to the large-NcN_c, N=4\mathcal{N} = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at (infinitely) strong coupling, is, as we argue, in our setup coupled to a dynamical U(1)U(1) gauge field with a renormalisation condition-dependent electromagnetic coupling. After constructing the holographic dictionary for gauge-gravity duals of field theories with higher-form symmetries, we compute the dual equation of state and transport coefficients, and for the first time analyse phenomenology of MHD waves in a strongly interacting, dense plasma with a (holographic) microscopic description. From weak to extremely strong magnetic fields, several predictions for the behaviour of Alfv\'{e}n and magnetosonic waves are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.04182,
  title  = {Generalised global symmetries in holography: magnetohydrodynamic waves in a strongly interacting plasma},
  author = {Sašo Grozdanov and Napat Poovuttikul},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.04182},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

V3: 53 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. Comments and references added. Version published in JHEP