English

Viscous hydrodynamics relaxation time from AdS/CFT

High Energy Physics - Theory 2008-11-26 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We consider an expanding boost-invariant plasma at strong coupling using the AdS/CFT correspondence for N=4 SYM. We determine the relaxation time in second order viscous hydrodynamics and find that it is around thirty times shorter than weak coupling expectations. We find that the nonsingularity of the dual geometry in the string frame necessitates turning on the dilaton which leads to a nonvanishing expectation value for tr F^2 behaving like tau^(-10/3).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0703243,
  title  = {Viscous hydrodynamics relaxation time from AdS/CFT},
  author = {Michal P. Heller and Romuald A. Janik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0703243},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

10 pages, Mathematica script included in the source; v2: typo in (28) fixed, statement about electric/magnetic modes corrected

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:41:32.871Z