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Viscosity bound violation in holographic solids and the viscoelastic response

Journal of High Energy Physics volume 2016, Article number: 74 (2016) Cite this article

A preprint version of the article is available at arXiv.

Abstract

We argue that the Kovtun-Son-Starinets (KSS) lower bound on the viscosity to entropy density ratio holds in fluid systems but is violated in solid materials with a nonzero shear elastic modulus. We construct explicit examples of this by applying the standard gauge/gravity duality methods to massive gravity and show that the KSS bound is clearly violated in black brane solutions whenever the massive gravity theories are of solid type. We argue that the physical reason for the bound violation relies on the viscoelastic nature of the mechanical response in these materials. We speculate on whether any real-world materials can violate the bound and discuss a possible generalization of the bound that involves the ratio of the shear elastic modulus to the pressure.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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Affiliations

  1. Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Strada Costiera 11, 34151, Trieste, Italy

    Lasma Alberte

  2. Institut de F´ısica d’Altes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), Campus UAB, 08193, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain

    Matteo Baggioli & Oriol Pujolàs

  3. Department of Physics, Institute for Condensed Matter Theory, University of Illinois, 1110 W. Green Street, Urbana, IL, 61801, U.S.A.

    Matteo Baggioli

Authors
  1. Lasma Alberte
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  2. Matteo Baggioli
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Correspondence to Lasma Alberte.

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ArXiv ePrint: 1601.03384v2

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Alberte, L., Baggioli, M. & Pujolàs, O. Viscosity bound violation in holographic solids and the viscoelastic response. J. High Energ. Phys. 2016, 74 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2016)074

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2016)074

Keywords

  • Holography and condensed matter physics (AdS/CMT)
  • Gauge-gravity correspondence
  • Space-Time Symmetries