Near the horizon of a black brane in Anti-de Sitter (AdS) space and near the AdS boundary, the long-wavelength fluctuations of the metric exhibit hydrodynamic behaviour. The gauge-gravity duality then relates the boundary hydrodynamics for generalized gravity to that of gauge theories with large finite values of 't Hooft coupling. We discuss, for this framework, the hydrodynamics of the shear mode in generalized theories of gravity in d+1 dimensions. It is shown that the shear diffusion coefficients of the near-horizon and boundary hydrodynamics are equal and can be expressed in a form that is purely local to the horizon. We find that the Einstein-theory relation between the shear diffusion coefficient and the shear viscosity to entropy ratio is modified for generalized gravity theories: Both can be explicitly written as the ratio of a pair of polarization-specific gravitational couplings but implicate differently polarized gravitons. Our analysis is restricted to the shear-mode fluctuations for simplicity and clarity; however, our methods can be applied to the hydrodynamics of all gravitational and matter fluctuation modes.
In this paper we calculate the ratio of transverse shear viscosity to entropy density for the general anisotropic black brane in Horava-Lifshitz gravity. There is a well-known conjecture that states this ratio should be larger than $\frac{1}{4π}$. The ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density is proportional to the inverse square coupling of quantum thermal field theory,$\frac{η}{s} \sim \frac{1}{λ^2 }$. Especially in QFT with gravity dual the stronger coupling means the shear viscosity per entropy density gets closer to the lower bound of $\frac{1}{4π}$. The KSS bound preserves in the aniso…
We study the shear mode in the gauge/gravity correspondence at finite temperature. First, we confirm the general formula for the shear viscosity in an arbitrary background metric which includes a black hole in the fifth dimension. We then derive a general formula for the shear mode relaxation time which appears in the theory of relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics; it agrees with known expressions in the limit of conformal fields. These results may be useful in relativistic viscous fluid descriptions of high energy nuclear collisions at RHIC and LHC.
We calculate the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density for a black brane of $5$-dimensional Einstein-Yang-Mills Gravity by Kubo and membrane paradigm methods. The former gives $\frac{1}{4π}$ exactly which is an expected result in the context of the Einstein-Hilbert gravity. In contrast, the membrane paradigm reaches $\frac{1}{4π}$ only in large horizon radius limit. We comment on this discrepancy.
In higher dimensions, we study Degenerate-Higher-Order-Scalar-Tensor theories and we derive solutions that resemble the Schwarzschild Anti-de Sitter black holes. We compute their thermodynamic quantities following the Wald formalism, satisfying the First Law of Thermodynamics and a higher dimensional Smarr relation. Constructing a Noether charge with a suitable choice of a space-like Killing vector, we obtain the shear viscosity of the non-gravitational dual field theory, where for a suitable choice of the couplings functions, the Kovtun-Son-Starinets bound is violated. These results are corro…
Near the horizon of a black brane solution in Anti-de Sitter space, the long-wavelength fluctuations of the metric exhibit hydrodynamic behaviour. For Einstein's theory, the ratio of the shear viscosity of near-horizon metric fluctuations eta to the entropy per unit of transverse volume s is eta/s=1/4 pi. We propose that, in generalized theories of gravity, this ratio is given by the ratio of two effective gravitational couplings and can be different than 1/4 pi. Our proposal implies that eta/s is equal for any pair of gravity theories that can be transformed into each other by a field redefin…
We calculate the shear viscosity in the frame of AdS/CFT correspondence for the field theory with a gravity dual of Einstein-Born-Infeld gravity. We find that the ratio of $η/s$ is still the conjectured universal value $1/4π$ at least up to the first order of the Born-Infeld parameter $1/b^2$.
In higher dimensions, we explore planar hairy black hole configurations for a special subclass of the Horndeski theory, defined by two coupling functions depending on the kinetic term and enjoying shift symmetry and reflection symmetry. For this analysis, we derive a set of new solutions, given by time-dependent as well as time independent scalar field configurations. Additionally, we calculate their thermodynamic quantities by using Wald formalism, satisfying the First Law of Thermodynamics as well as a Smarr relation. Together with the above, the Wald procedure allows us to compute the shear…
We show in a fully covariant way that, there exist a class of $f(R)$ models for which a shear-free, almost FLRW universe can expand and rotate at the same time .
We calculate shear viscosity to entropy density ratio in presence of four derivative (with coefficient $α'$) and six derivative (with coefficient $α'^2$) terms in bulk action. In general, there can be three possible four derivative terms and ten possible six derivative terms in the Lagrangian. Among them two four derivative and eight six derivative terms are ambiguous, i.e., these terms can be removed from the action by suitable field redefinitions. Rest are unambiguous. According to the AdS/CFT correspondence all the unambiguous coefficients (coefficients of unambiguous terms) can be fixed in…
We have examined holographic renormalization group($RG$) flows of the shear viscosities in anisotropic holographic superfluids via their gravity duals, Einstein-SU(2) Yang-Mills system. In anisotropic phase, below the critical temperature $T_c$, the SO(3) isometry(spatial rotation) in the dual gravity system is broken down to the residual SO(2). The shear viscosities in the symmetry broken directions of the conformal fluids defined on $AdS$ boundary present non-universal values which depend on the chemical potential $μ$ and temperature $T$ of the system and also satisfy non-trivial holographic…
In four dimensions, we consider a generalized scalar-tensor theory where the coupling functions only depend on the kinetic term of the scalar field. For this model, we obtain a set of hairy Anti-de-Sitter black hole solutions, allowing us to calculate the computational complexity, according to the Complexity equals Action conjecture. To perform this, the system contains a particle moving on the boundary, corresponding to the insertion of a fundamental string in the bulk. The effect string is given by the Nambu-Goto term, analyzing the time development of this system. Together with the above, w…
A very famous result of gauge/gravity duality is the universality of the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density in every field theory holographically dual to classical, two-derivative (Einstein) gravity. We present a way to obtain deviation form this universality by breaking the rotational symmetry spontaneously. In anisotropic fluids additional shear modes exist and their corresponding shear viscosities may be non-universal. We confirm this by explicitly calculating the shear viscosities in a transversely isotropic background, a p-wave superfluid, and study its critical behavior. This is…
We discuss corrections to the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density $η/s$ in higher-derivative gravity theories. Generically, these theories contain ghost modes with Planck-scale masses. Motivated by general considerations about unitarity, we propose new boundary conditions for the equations of motion of the graviton perturbations that force the amplitude of the ghosts modes to vanish. We analyze explicitly four-derivative perturbative corrections to Einstein gravity which generically lead to four-derivative equations of motion, compare our choice of boundary conditions to previous propo…
It has been conjectured, on the basis of the gauge-gravity duality, that the ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density should be universally bounded from below by 1/ 4 pi in units of the Planck constant divided by the Boltzmann constant. Here, we prove the bound for any ghost-free extension of Einstein gravity and the field-theory dual thereof. Our proof is based on the fact that, for such an extension, any gravitational coupling can only increase from its Einstein value. Therefore, since the shear viscosity is a particular gravitational coupling, it is minimal for Einstein gravity. …
We calculate the shear viscosity of field theories with gravity duals of Gauss-Bonnet gravity with a non-trivial dilaton using AdS/CFT. We find that the dilaton filed has a non-trivial contribution to the ratio of shear viscosity over entropy density and after imposing causal constraint for the boundary field theory, the new lower bound $4/25π$, obtained from pure Gauss-Bonnet gravity, may have a small violation.
We reconsider, from a novel perspective, how unitarity constrains the corrections to the ratio of shear viscosity η to entropy density s. We start with higher-derivative extensions of Einstein gravity in asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes. It is assumed that these theories are derived from string theory and thus have a unitary UV completion that is dual to a unitary, UV-complete boundary gauge theory. We then propose that the gravitational perturbations about a solution of the UV complete theory are described by an effective theory whose linearized equations of motion have at most two ti…
We investigate $η/s$ in linear scalar fields modified Gauss-Bonnet theory that breaks translation invariance. We first calculate $η/s$ both analytically and numerically and show its relationship with temperature in log-log plot. Our results show that $η/s\sim T^2$ at low temperatures. The causality is also considered in this work. We then find that causality violation still happens in the presence of the linear scalar field and we suggest there is a Gauss-Bonnet coupling dependent lower limit for the effective mass of the graviton. If the effective mass of the graviton is big enough, then ther…
We calculate the shear viscosity of field theories with gravity duals using Kubo-formula by calculating the Green function of dual transverse gravitons and confirm that the value of the shear viscosity is fully determined by the effective coupling of transverse gravitons on the horizon. We calculate the effective coupling of transverse gravitons for Einstein and Gauss-Bonnet gravities coupled with matter fields, respectively. Then we apply the resulting formula to the case of AdS Gauss-Bonnet gravity with $F^4$ term corrections of Maxwell field and discuss the effect of $F^4$ terms on the rati…
Recently it was established in Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity that the KSS viscosity/entropy ratio associated with AdS planar black holes can be viewed as the boundary dual to the generalized Smarr relation of the black holes in the bulk. In this paper we establish this relation in Einstein gravity with general minimally-coupled matter, and also in theories with an additional non-minimally coupled scalar field. We consider two examples for explicit demonstrations.
We explore in greater detail our investigations of shear diffusion in hyperscaling violating Lifshitz theories in arXiv:1604.05092 [hep-th]. This adapts and generalizes the membrane-paradigm-like analysis of Kovtun, Son and Starinets for shear gravitational perturbations in the near horizon region given certain self-consistent approximations, leading to the shear diffusion constant on an appropriately defined stretched horizon. In theories containing a gauge field, some of the metric perturbations mix with some of the gauge field perturbations and the above analysis is somewhat more complicate…
The subject of relativistic hydrodynamics is explored using the tools of gauge/gravity duality. A brief literature review of AdS/CFT and gauge/gravity duality is presented first. This is followed by a pedagogical introduction to the use of these methods in determining hydrodynamic dispersion relations, $w(q)$, of perturbations in a strongly coupled fluid. Shear and sound mode perturbations are examined in a special class of gravity duals: those where the matter supporting the metric is scalar in nature. Analytical solutions (to order $q^4$ and $q^3$ respectively) for the shear and sound mode d…
First, we briefly review the description of gravity theories as gauge theories in three and four dimensions. Specifically, we recall the procedure in which the results of General Relativity in three and four dimensions are recovered in a gauge-theoretic approach. Also, the procedure is applied for the case of the Weyl gravity, too. Then, after reminding briefly the formulation of gauge theories on noncommutative spaces, we review our most recent works in which gravity models are constructed as gauge theories on noncommutative spaces.
We show that all non-linear completions of the Fierz-Pauli massive gravity are ruled out, because all theories which might be ghost-free have superluminal modes.
In this paper, we consider spin-3 Chern-Simons-like theories of gravity as extended theories of spin-3 gravity in (2+1)- dimension. In order to determine the number of local degrees of freedom we present the Hamiltonian formulation of these theories. We extract the Hamiltonian density, then we find primary and secondary constraints of these theories. Then we obtain the Poisson brackets of the primary and the secondary constraints. After that we count the number of local degrees of freedom of spin-3 Chern-Simons-like theories of gravity. We apply this method on spin-3 Einstein-Cartan gravity an…
We show that the recently proposed weak gravity conjecture\cite{AMNV0601} can be extended to a class of scalar field theories. Taking gravity into account, we find an upper bound on the gravity interaction strength, expressed in terms of scalar coupling parameters. This conjecture is supported by some two-dimensional models and noncommutative field theories.
We give the equations governing the shear evolution in Bianchi spacetimes for general f(R)-theories of gravity. We consider the case of R^n-gravity and perform a detailed analysis of the dynamics in Bianchi I cosmologies which exhibit local rotational symmetry. We find exact solutions and study their behaviour and stability in terms of the values of the parameter n. In particular, we found a set of cosmic histories in which the universe is initially isotropic, then develops shear anisotropies which approaches a constant value.
In this short note we perform canonical analysis of Schrodinger field and non-relativistic electrodynamics coupled to Newton-Cartan gravity. We identify physical degrees of freedom and analyze constraints structure of these theories.
The sound mode hydrodynamic dispersion relation is computed up to order $q^3$ for a class of gravitational duals which includes both Schwarzschild $AdS$ and Dp-Brane metrics. The implications for second order transport coefficients are examined within the context of Israel-Stewart theory. These sound mode results are compared with previously known results for the shear mode. This comparison allows one to determine the third order hydrodynamic contributions to the shear mode for the class of metrics considered here.
We construct a class of theories which extend New Massive Gravity to higher orders in curvature in any dimension. The lagrangians arise as limits of a new class of bimetric theories of Lovelock gravity, which are unitary theories free from the Boulware-Deser ghost. These Lovelock bigravity models represent the most general non-chiral ghost-free theories of an interacting massless and massive spin-two field in any dimension. The scaling limit is taken in such a way that unitarity is explicitly broken, but the Boulware-Deser ghost remains absent. This automatically implies the existence of a hol…
This paper deals with the problem of defining off-shell conserved charges in a set of theories known as Chern-Simons-like theories of gravity (CSLTG). The method is derived in a general way, which may find applications in a wide set of theories, and then specified to the case of Generalized minimal massive gravity (GMMG), where known results of the central charge and black hole entropy are reproduced. The results for the charges are useful to the community and can be applied to all three-dimensional gravity theories within the class of CSLTG which includes almost all of them. The given specifi…
AdS-hydrodynamics has proven to be a useful tool for obtaining transport coefficients observed in the collective flow of strongly coupled fluids like quark gluon plasma (QGP). Particularly, the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density ${η/ s}$ obtained from elliptic flow measurements can be matched with the computation done in the dual gravity theory. The experimentally observed temperature dependence of ${η/ s}$ requires the study of scalar matter coupled AdS gravity including higher derivative curvature corrections. We obtain the backreaction to the metric for such a matter coupled AdS gr…
We study quasinormal modes of shear gravitational perturbations for hyperscaling violating Lifshitz theories, with Lifshitz and hyperscaling violating exponents $z$ and $θ$. The lowest quasinormal mode frequency yields a shear diffusion constant which is in agreement with that obtained in previous work by other methods. In particular for theories with $z< d_i+2-θ$ where $d_i$ is the boundary spatial dimension, the shear diffusion constant exhibits power-law scaling with temperature, while for $z=d_i+2-θ$, it exhibits logarithmic scaling. We then calculate certain 2-point functions of the dual …
Chiral Higher Spin Gravity with cosmological constant is constructed as a Free Differential Algebra, i.e. at the level of equations of motion, which is a smooth deformation of its flat space cousin arXiv:2205.07794. Chiral Higher Spin Gravity is a unique class of local higher spin theories; its very existence implies that there is a closed and, most likely, integrable sub-sector of Chern-Simons Matter Theories, which has important consequences both for the theories themselves and for three-dimensional bosonization duality.
Conformal theories in a d dimensional spacetime may be expressed as manifestly conformal theories in a d+2 dimensional conformal space as first proposed by Dirac. The reduction to d dimensions goes via the d+1 dimensional hypercone in the conformal space. Here we give a rather extensive expose of such theories. We review and extend the theory of spinning conformal particles. We give a precise and geometrical formulation of manifestly conformal fields for which we give a consistent action principle. The requirement of invariance under special gauge transformations off the hypercone plays a fund…
We consider warped AdS_3 black holes in generic higher derivatives gravity theories in 2+1 dimensions. The asymptotic symmetry group of the phase space containing these black holes is the semi-direct product of a centrally extended Virasoro algebra and an affine u(1) Kac-Moody algebra. Previous works have shown that in some specific theories, the entropy of these black holes agrees with a Cardy-like entropy formula derived for warped conformal field theories. In this paper, we show that this entropy matching continues to hold for the most general higher derivative theories of gravity. We also …
We calculate the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density for charged black branes in third order Lovelock theory. For chargeless black branes, the result turns out to be consistent with the prediction made in $\rm arXiv:0808.3498[\rm hep-th] $. We find that, the third order Lovelock gravity term does not contribute to causality violation unlike the Gauss-Bonnet term. The stability of the black brane again requires the value of the Lovelock coupling constant to be bounded by 1/4 in the infinite dimensionality limit.
In massive gravity and in bimetric theories of gravity, two constraints are needed to eliminate the two phase-space degrees of freedom of the Boulware-Deser ghost. For recently proposed non-linear theories, a Hamiltonian constraint has been shown to exist and an associated secondary constraint was argued to arise as well. In this paper we explicitly demonstrate the existence of the secondary constraint. Thus the Boulware-Deser ghost is completely absent from these non-linear massive gravity theories and from the corresponding bimetric theories.
We study holographic shear sum rules in Einstein gravity with curvature squared corrections. Sum rules relate weighted integral over spectral densities of retarded correlators in the shear channel to the one point functions of the CFTs. The proportionality constant can be written in terms of the data of three point functions of the stress tenors of the CFT ($t_2$ and $t_4$). For CFTs dual to two derivative Einstein gravity, this proportionality constant is just $\frac{d}{2(d+1)}$. This has been verified by a direct holographic computation of the retarded correlator for Einstein gravity in $AdS…
In this paper we investigate the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density, $η/s$, in hyperscaling violating geometry with lattice structure. We show that the scaling relation with hyperscaling violation gives a strong constraint to the mass of graviton and usually leads to a power law of temperature, $η/s\sim T^κ$. We find the exponent $κ$ can be greater than two such that the new bound for viscosity raised in arXiv:1601.02757 is violated. Our above observation is testified by constructing specific solutions with UV completion in various holographic models. Finally, we compare the boundedne…
In the framework of Metric-Affine Gravity, the existing correspondence between the Einstein tensor and the energy-momentum tensor of matter provided by General Relativity is extended towards a post-Riemannian description in terms of the torsion and nonmetricity fields, which are sourced by the spin, dilation and shear currents of matter. In this work, we focus on the dynamical role of the traceless part of the nonmetricity tensor and its intrinsic connection with shears, defining a model which encloses a new black hole solution endowed with shear charges. We show that the extension in the pres…
We use the cosmic shear data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey to place constraints on $f(R)$ and {\it Generalized Dilaton} models of modified gravity. This is highly complimentary to other probes since the constraints mainly come from the non-linear scales: maximal deviations with respects to the General-Relativity + $Λ$CDM scenario occurs at $k\sim1 h \mbox{Mpc}^{-1}$. At these scales, it becomes necessary to account for known degeneracies with baryon feedback and massive neutrinos, hence we place constraints jointly on these three physical effects. To achieve this, we f…
In the present paper, based on the principles of gauge/gravity duality we analytically compute the shear viscosity to entropy ratio corresponding to the superfluid phase in Einstein Gauss-Bonnet gravity. From our analysis we note that the ratio indeed receives a finite temperature correction below certain critical temperature. This proves the non universality of shear viscosity to entropy ratio in higher derivative theories of gravity. We also compute the upper bound for the Gauss-Bonnet coupling corresponding to the symmetry broken phase and note that the upper bound on the coupling does not …
We discuss locally Weyl (scale) covariant generalisations of gravitational theories using Riemann-Cartan-Weyl space-times in arbitrary dimensions. We demonstrate the procedure of Weyl gauging on two examples in particular: General relativity, and topologically massive gravity in three dimensions.
A sum rule which relates a stress-energy tensor correlator to thermodynamic functions is examined within the context of a simple non-conformal gravity dual. Such a sum rule was previously derived using AdS/CFT for conformal $\mathcal{N} = 4$ Supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, but we show that it does not generalize to the non-conformal theory under consideration. We provide a generalized sum rule and numerically verify its validity. A useful byproduct of the calculation is the computation of the spectral density in a strongly coupled non-conformal theory. Qualitative features of the spectral de…
Motivated by the vast string landscape, we consider the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio in conformal field theories dual to Einstein gravity with curvature square corrections. After field redefinitions these theories reduce to Gauss-Bonnet gravity, which has special properties that allow us to compute the shear viscosity nonperturbatively in the Gauss-Bonnet coupling. By tuning of the coupling, the value of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio can be adjusted to any positive value from infinity down to zero, thus violating the conjectured viscosity bound. At linear order in th…
We start by briefly reviewing the description of gravity theories as gauge theories in four dimensions. More specifically we recall the procedure leading to the results of General Relativity and Weyl Gravity in a gauge-theoretic manner. Then, after a brief reminder of the formulation of gauge theories on noncommutative spaces, we review our recent work, where gravity is constructed as a gauge theory on the fuzzy $dS_4$.
We present locally scale (Weyl) covariant generalisation of Minimal Massive Gravity theory using the language of exterior differential forms on Riemann-Cartan-Weyl space-times. The theory is expressed by a locally scale invariant action and locally scale covariant field equations are found by a first order variational formalism.
In this paper we show how to compute the shear relaxation time from an underlying microscopic theory. We prove that the shear relaxation time in Israel-Stewart-type theories is given by the inverse of the pole of the corresponding retarded Green's function, which is nearest to the origin in the complex energy plane. Consequently, the relaxation time in such theories is a microscopic, and not a macroscopic, i.e., fluid-dynamical time scale.
Generalised Proca theories of gravity represent an interesting class of vector-tensor theories where only three propagating degrees of freedom are present. In this work, we propose a new teleparallel gravity analog to Proca theories where the generalised Proca framework is extended due to the lower order nature of torsion based gravity. We develop a new action contribution and explore the example of the Friedmann equations in this regime. We find that teleparallel Proca theories offer the possibility of a much larger class of models in which do have an impact on background cosmology.
In ref. \cite{1406.7222}, we reported a construction of all order linearized fluid dynamics with strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills theory as underlying microscopic description. The linearized fluid/gravity correspondence makes it possible to resum all order derivative terms in the fluid stress tensor. Dissipative effects are fully encoded by the shear term and a new one, emerging starting from third order in hydrodynamic derivative expansion. In this work, we provide all computational details omitted in \cite{1406.7222} and present additional results. We derive closed-form line…
