Related papers: A sticky business: the status of the conjectured v…
The lower bound of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio is examined using an exact representation of the ratio through the density of states. It is shown that the lower bound in a generic physical system is not universal, its value…
The ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density $\eta/s$ of any material in nature has been conjectured to have a lower bound of $1/4\pi$, the famous KSS bound. We examine string theory models for evidence in favour of and against this…
Many counterexamples to the proposed KSS bound $\frac\eta s \ge \frac 1 {4\pi}$ depend on constructing systems with large numbers of species. As a result, the entropy density grows large and $\frac \eta s$ can be made arbitrarily small.…
Transport coefficeints, in particular the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio is studied in systems where the small-width quasiparticle assumption is not valid. It is found that $\eta/s$ has no unversal lower bound, the minimal value…
The ratio eta/s, shear viscosity (eta) to entropy density (s), reaches its local minimum at the (second order) phase transition temperature in a wide class of systems. It was suspected that this behavior might be universal. However, a…
Starting from relativistic quantum field theories, Kovtun et al. (2005) have quite recently proposed a lower bound eta/s >= hbar /(4 pi kB), where eta is the shear viscosity and s the volume density of entropy for dense liquids. If their…
It was recently conjectured that the ratio of the shear viscosity to entropy density, $ \eta/ s$, for any fluid always exceeds $\hbar/(4 \pi k_B)$. This conjecture was motivated by quantum field theoretic results obtained via the AdS/CFT…
This review highlights some of the lessons that the holographic gauge/gravity duality has taught us regarding the behavior of the shear viscosity to entropy density in strongly coupled field theories. The viscosity to entropy ratio has been…
We show that in theories where the lowest energy excitations are not quasiparticles but they form a continuum, the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio goes to zero as the temperature goes to zero. In these theories therefore there is…
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…
For gauge theories with an Einstein gravity dual, the AdS/CFT correspondence predicts a universal value for the ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density, $\eta/s=1/4\pi$. The holographic calculations have motivated the…
In recent work we showed that, for a class of conformal field theories (CFT) with Gauss-Bonnet gravity dual, the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, $\eta/s$, could violate the conjectured Kovtun-Starinets-Son viscosity bound,…
The ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density, $\eta/s$, is computed in various holographic geometries that break translation invariance (but are isotropic). The shear viscosity does not have a hydrodynamic interpretation in such…
It has been conjectured, on the basis of the gauge-gravity duality, that the ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density should be universally bounded from below by 1/ 4 pi in units of the Planck constant divided by the Boltzmann…
The anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT) has been used to determine a lower bound on the ratio of shear viscosity $\left(\eta\right)$ to entropy density $(s)$ for strongly-coupled field theories with a gravity…
We extract the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio \eta/s of cold fermionic atoms in the unitarity limit from experimental data on the damping of collective excitations. We find that near the critical temperature \eta/s is roughly…
We calculate the ratio eta/s, the shear viscosity (eta) to entropy density (s), which characterizes how perfect a fluid is, in weakly coupled real scalar field theories with different types of phase transitions. The mean-field results of…
In this perspective review, we present a concise yet multifaceted overview of the pivotal role played by the the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio across various physical contexts. After summarizing some of the main aspects of the…
The universal lower bound of the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density is suggested by the string theory and gauge duality for any matter. We examined the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density for viscous accretion flow towards…
This is a response to the comment, arXiv:0709.4651. It is noted that while the comment raises an extremely interesting and subtle point, the original conclusion that theoretically consistent exceptions exist for the proposed general bound…