Coupling constant dependence of the shear viscosity in N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory

Journal article

Gauge theory-gravity duality predicts that the shear viscosity of N = 4 supersymmetric SU(N c) Yang-Mills plasma at temperature T in the limit of large N c and large 't Hooft coupling g YM2N c is independent of the coupling and equals to πN c2T 3 /8. In this paper, we compute the leading correction to the shear viscosity in inverse powers of 't Hooft coupling using the α′-corrected low-energy effective action of type IIB string theory. We also find the correction to the ratio of shear viscosity to the volume entropy density (equal to 1/4π in the limit of infinite coupling). The correction to 1/4π scales as (g YM2N c) -3/2 with a positive coefficient. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Authors: Buchel, A; Liu, J; Starinets, A

• Journal: Nuclear Physics B
• Volume: 707
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 56-68
• Publication date: 2005-02-14
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2004.11.055
• ISSN: 0550-3213
• Language: English
• Keywords: Thermal field theory; AdS/CFT correspondence