Transport coefficients of strongly coupled gauge theories: insights from string theory

Abstract

The transport properties of certain strongly coupled thermal gauge theories can be determined from their effective description in terms of gravity or superstring theory duals. Here we provide a short summary of the results for the shear and bulk viscosity, charge diffusion constant, and the speed of sound in supersymmetric strongly interacting plasmas. We also outline a general algorithm for computing transport coefficients in any gravity dual. The algorithm relates the transport coefficients to the coefficients in the quasinormal spectrum of five-dimensional black holes in asymptotically anti de Sitter space.

10 pages, 2 figures; contribution to the proceedings of the workshop on Quark-Gluon Plasma Thermalization, August 10-12, 2005, Vienna, Austria