arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Pavel Kovtun.
We show that Gauss-Bonnet black branes in five-dimensional anti-de Sitter gravity are unstable when the Gauss-Bonnet coupling falls outside the range allowed by the conformal collider bounds. The unstable modes and the boundary causality violating modes are connected by a phase rotation of complex boundary momentum.
Equilibrium states of ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory can be characterized by the temperature and three chemical potentials, corresponding to the ${\rm U}(1)^3$ subgroup of the $R$-symmetry group. We investigate the phase diagram of the theory at strong coupling, in the grand canonical ensemble in flat space, using its holographic description via the five-dimensional model of Behrnd, Cvetič, and Sabra. The bulk action includes the metric, three Abelian gauge fields, and two neutral scalar fields. The equilibrium state described by the charged black brane is always thermodynamically unstable at low temperature. Relativistic hydrodynamics with multiple conserved charges predicts that thermodynamic instability is accompanied by a dynamical instability, with the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the corresponding Hessian playing a key role in identifying the unstable modes. We explicitly demonstrate this for three equal chemical potentials, finding unstable quasinormal modes that describe $R$-charge diffusion. Consequently, the low-temperature phase of ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with equal chemical potentials is not described by the AdS-Reissner-Nordström black brane.
We explore the relationship between linear and non-linear causality in theories of dissipative relativistic fluid dynamics. While for some fluid-dynamical theories, a linearized causality analysis can be used to determine whether the full non-linear theory is causal, for others it can not. As an illustration, we study relativistic viscous magnetohydrodynamics supplemented by a neutral-particle current, with resistive corrections to the conservation of magnetic flux. The dissipative theory has 10 transport coefficients, including anisotropic viscosities, electric resistivities, and neutral-particle conductivities. We show how causality properties of this magnetohydrodynamic theory, in the most general fluid frame, may be understood from the linearized analysis.
We explore the consequences of relativistic causality and covariant stability for short-wavelength dispersion relations in classical systems. For excitations described by a finite number of partial differential equations, as is the case in relativistic hydrodynamics, we give causality and covariant stability constraints on the excitation's frequency at large momenta.
We construct stable and causal effective field theories (EFTs) for describing statistical fluctuations in relativistic diffusion and relativistic hydrodynamics. These EFTs are fully non-linear, including couplings to background sources, and enable us to compute n-point time-ordered correlation functions including the effects of statistical fluctuations. The EFTs we construct are inspired by the Maxwell-Cattaneo model of relativistic diffusion and Müller-Israel-Stewart model of relativistic hydrodynamics respectively, and have been derived using both the Martin-Siggia-Rose and Schwinger-Keldysh formalisms. The EFTs non-linearly realise the dynamical Kubo-Martin-Schwinger (KMS) symmetry, which ensures that n-point correlation functions and interactions in the theory satisfy the appropriate fluctuation-dissipation theorems. Since these EFTs typically admit ultraviolet sectors that are not fixed by the low-energy infrared symmetries, we find that they simultaneously admit multiple realisations of the dynamical KMS symmetry. We also comment on certain obstructions to including statistical fluctuations in the recently-proposed stable and causal Bemfica-Disconzi-Noronha-Kovtun model of relativistic hydrodynamics.
For static matter in a gravitational field, different conventions for equilibrium local temperature exist in the classic physics literature. We illustrate the difference between two popular conventions using black-body radiation in a spherically symmetric gravitational potential. Equilibrium temperatures defined by the "Landau frame" or "Eckart frame" prescriptions most commonly used in relativistic fluid dynamics do not satisfy the statistical-mechanical relation $1/T=dS/dE$.
We summarize recent progress in the development, application, and understanding of effective field theories and highlight promising directions for future research. This Report is prepared as the TF02 "Effective Field Theory" topical group summary for the Theory Frontier as part of the Snowmass 2021 process.
We review recent progress and a number of future directions for applications of effective field theory methods to condensed matter systems broadly defined. Our emphasis is on areas that have allowed a fertile exchange of ideas between high energy physics and many-body theory. We discuss developments in the effective field theory of spontaneous symmetry breaking, of hydrodynamics and non-equilibrium dynamics more generally, fracton phases of matter, and dualities between 2+1 dimensional field theories. We furthermore discuss the application of effective field theory to non-Fermi liquids, the dynamics of entanglement entropy and to condensed matter aspects of cosmology.
We show how causal relativistic Navier-Stokes equations arise from the relativistic Boltzmann equation: the causality is preserved via a judicious choice of the zero modes of the collision operator. A completely analogous procedure may be used to extract causal hydrodynamics from the fluid-gravity correspondence: again, causality of the hydrodynamic equations is preserved by a suitable choice of zero modes of the corresponding differential operators in the bulk. We give examples of zero modes which give rise to causal hydrodynamic equations for non-conformal fluids with a conserved U(1) global symmetry current.
We study one-loop corrections to retarded and symmetric hydrostatic correlation functions within the Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory framework for relativistic hydrodynamics, focusing on charge diffusion. We first consider the simplified setup with only diffusive charge density fluctuations, and then augment it with momentum fluctuations in a model where the sound modes can be ignored. We show that the loop corrections, which generically induce non-analyticities and long-range effects at finite frequency, non-trivially preserve analyticity of retarded correlation functions in spatial momentum due to the KMS constraint, as a manifestation of thermal screening. For the purposes of this analysis, we develop an interacting field theory for diffusive hydrodynamics, seen as a limit of relativistic hydrodynamics in the absence of temperature and longitudinal velocity fluctuations.
We investigate the effects of stochastic interactions on hydrodynamic correlation functions using the Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory. We identify new "stochastic transport coefficients" that are invisible in the classical constitutive relations, but nonetheless affect the late-time behaviour of hydrodynamic correlation functions through loop corrections. These results indicate that classical transport coefficients do not provide a universal characterisation of long-distance, late-time correlations even within the framework of fluctuating hydrodynamics.
Einstein's equations in matter are gravitational analogues of Maxwell's equations in matter, providing an effective classical description of gravitational fields. We derive Einstein's equations in matter for relativistic fluids, and use them to illustrate how the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations are modified by the matter's response to curvature. For a gas of massive fermions, we evaluate how the effective Newton's constant and other susceptibilities depend on the temperature and density. In anti-de Sitter space, we study the $O(1/(T\ell)^2)$ corrections to the geometries sourced by perfect fluids, and illustrate the breakdown of hydrostatics in AdS at small temperatures.
Relativistic Navier-Stokes equations express the conservation of the energy-momentum tensor and the particle number current in terms of the local hydrodynamic variables: temperature, fluid velocity, and the chemical potential. We show that the viscous-fluid equations are stable and causal if one adopts suitable non-equilibrium definitions of the hydrodynamic variables.
We study linearized stability in first-order relativistic viscous hydrodynamics in the most general frame. There is a region in the parameter space of transport coefficients where the perturbations of the equilibrium state are stable. This defines a class of stable frames, with the Landau-Lifshitz frame falling outside the class. The existence of stable frames suggests that viscous relativistic fluids may admit a sensible hydrodynamic description in terms of temperature, fluid velocity, and the chemical potential only, i.e. in terms of the same hydrodynamic variables as non-relativistic fluids. Alternatively, it suggests that the Israel-Stewart and similar constructions may be unnecessary for a sensible relativistic hydrodynamic theory.
Uncharged relativistic fluids in 3+1 dimensions have three independent thermodynamic transport coefficients at second order in the derivative expansion. Fluids with a single global $U(1)$ current have nine, out of which seven are parity preserving. We derive the Kubo formulas for all nine thermodynamic transport coefficients in terms of equilibrium correlation functions of the energy-momentum tensor and the current. All parity-preserving coefficients can be expressed in terms of two-point functions in flat space without external sources, while the parity-violating coefficients require three-point functions. We use the Kubo formulas to compute the thermodynamic coefficients in several examples of free field theories.
We present the equations of relativistic hydrodynamics coupled to dynamical electromagnetic fields, including the effects of polarization, electric fields, and the derivative expansion. We enumerate the transport coefficients at leading order in derivatives, including electrical conductivities, viscosities, and thermodynamic coefficients. We find the constraints on transport coefficients due to the positivity of entropy production, and derive the corresponding Kubo formulas. For the neutral state in a magnetic field, small fluctuations include Alfven waves, magnetosonic waves, and the dissipative modes. For the state with a non-zero dynamical charge density in a magnetic field, plasma oscillations gap out all propagating modes, except for Alfven-like waves with a quadratic dispersion relation. We relate the transport coefficients in the "conventional" magnetohydrodynamics (formulated using Maxwell's equations in matter) to those in the "dual" version of magnetohydrodynamics (formulated using the conserved magnetic flux).
We give the free energy of equilibrium relativistic matter subject to external gravitational and electromagnetic fields, to one-derivative order in the gradients of the external fields. The free energy allows for a straightforward derivation of bound currents and bound momenta in equilibrium. At leading order, the energy-momentum tensor admits a simple expression in terms of the polarization tensor. Beyond the leading order, electric and magnetic polarization vectors are intrinsically ambiguous. The physical effects of polarization, such as the correlation between the magneto-vortically induced surface charge and the electro-vortically induced surface current, are not ambiguous.
We study thermal fluctuation corrections to charge and heat conductivity in systems with locally conserved energy and charge, but without locally conserved momentum. Thermal fluctuations may naturally lead to a lower bound on diffusion constants for thermoelectric transport, and need to be taken into account when discussing potential bounds on transport coefficients.