Related papers: Proof of a universal lower bound on the shear visc…
We investigate the Einstein-Hilbert black brane solution in four-dimensional Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime supplemented by a quadratic Ricci scalar term $q L^2 R^2$, where $q$ is a dimensionless coupling constant and $L$ is the AdS radius.…
Despite the viscosity of a fluid ranges over several orders of magnitudes and is extremely sensitive to microscopic structure and molecular interactions, it has been conjectured that its (opportunely normalized) minimum displays a universal…
We present a mathematical proof of Einstein's formula for the effective viscosity of a dilute suspension of rigid neutrally--buoyant spheres when the spheres are centered on the vertices of a cubic lattice. We keep the size of the container…
We directly show that the local ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density for Unruh radiation at a finite distance from the horizon is universal and satisfies the relation $ \eta/s = 1/(4\pi c_s^2) $, which involves the speed of…
It is known that the Minkowski vacuum appears as a thermal medium to an accelerated observer due to the renowned Unruh effect. More recently, it has been shown that at least for lower-spin fields this medium also exhibits a non-zero…
Shear viscosity is a measure of the amount of dissipation in a simple fluid. In kinetic theory shear viscosity is related to the rate of momentum transport by quasi-particles, and the uncertainty relation suggests that the ratio of shear…
We study the ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density for various holographic superfluids. For the s-wave case, the ratio has the universal value 1/(4pi) as in various holographic models. For the p-wave case, there are two shear…
Using chiral perturbation theory we investigate the QCD shear viscosity ($\eta $) to entropy density ($s$) ratio below the deconfinement temperature ($\sim 170$ MeV) with zero baryon number density. It is found that $\eta /s$ of QCD is…
An explicit calculation is given of the entropy/energy ratio for the TM modes of the electromagnetic field in the half Einstein universe. This geometry provides a mathematically convenient and physically instructive example of how the…
We present a general analysis of the role of shear viscosity in cosmological backgrounds, focusing on isotropic space-time in both Einstein and $f(R)$ gravity. By computing the divergence of the stress-energy tensor in a general class of…
Weak gravity conjecture can be formulated as a statement that gravity must be the weakest force, compared to the other interactions in low energy effective field theory (EFT). Several arguments in favor of this statement were presented from…
The present work is devoted to studying the background dynamical evolution of a scalar field in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity in maximally symmetric space-time. This study is useful for giving meaning to the presence of two Gauss-Bonnet…
We investigate the shear viscosity and butterfly velocity of a magnetic field-induced quantum phase transition in five dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory, which is holographically dual to a class of strongly coupled quantum…
A recent analysis of the false-vacuum decay in non-perturbative regimes is here extended in the presence of Einstein gravity, computing the corresponding effective potential and decay rate. We consider a $\lambda \phi^4$ scalar field theory…
I show that the principle of equipartition, applied to area elements of a surface which are in equilibrium at the local Davies-Unruh temperature, allows one to determine the surface number density of the microscopic spacetime degrees of…
Einstein-aether theory is extended by allowing for spinning degrees of freedom of the aether. In addition to the acceleration, shear, expansion, and vorticity of the aether velocity field, a spin rotation describing the dynamics of a…
The phenomenological consequences of unification of Einstein gravity and electromagnetism in an early phase of a Machian universe with a very small and uniform electrical charge density $\rho_q$ are explored. A form of the Strong…
We compute the shear viscosity of a superfluid atomic Fermi gas in the unitarity limit. The unitarity limit is characterized by a divergent scattering length between the atoms, and it has been argued that this will result in a very small…
The weak-field limit of Einstein--Cartan (EC) relativity is studied. The equations of EC theory are rewritten such that they formally resemble those of Einstein General Relativity (EGR); this allows ideas from post-Newtonian theory to be…
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…