paper

Holography and hydrodynamics with weakly broken symmetries

arXiv:1810.10016 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.99.086012

Abstract

Hydrodynamics is a theory of long-range excitations controlled by equations of motion that encode the conservation of a set of currents (energy, momentum, charge, etc.) associated with explicitly realized global symmetries. If a system possesses additional weakly broken symmetries, the low-energy hydrodynamic degrees of freedom also couple to a few other "approximately conserved" quantities with parametrically long relaxation times. It is often useful to consider such approximately conserved operators and corresponding new massive modes within the low-energy effective theory, which we refer to as quasihydrodynamics. Examples of quasihydrodynamics are numerous, with the most transparent among them hydrodynamics with weakly broken translational symmetry. Here, we show how a number of other theories, normally not thought of in this context, can also be understood within a broader framework of quasihydrodynamics: in particular, the Müller-Israel-Stewart theory and magnetohydrodynamics coupled to dynamical electric fields. While historical formulations of quasihydrodynamic theories were typically highly phenomenological, here, we develop a holographic formalism to systematically derive such theories from a (microscopic) dual gravitational description. Beyond laying out a general holographic algorithm, we show how the Müller-Israel-Stewart theory can be understood from a dual higher-derivative gravity theory and magnetohydrodynamics from a dual theory with two-form bulk fields. In the latter example, this allows us to unambiguously demonstrate the existence of dynamical photons in the holographic description of magnetohydrodynamics.

arXiv comment65 pages, 5 figures. v2: minor changes, more references; v3: published version

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