We show that in a general class of strongly interacting theories at high temperatures the speed of sound approaches the conformal value c_s^2=1/3 universally from_below_. This class includes theories holographically dual to a theory of gravity coupled to a single scalar field, representing the operator of the scale anomaly.
We investigate the speed of sound in $(d+1)$-dimensional field theory by studying its dual $(d+2)$-dimensional gravity theory from gauge/gravity correspondence. Instead of the well known conformal limit $c_s^2 \rightarrow 1/d$ at high temperature, we reveal two more universal quantities in various limits: $c_s^2 \rightarrow (d-1)/16π$ at low temperature and $c_s^2 \rightarrow (d-1)/16πd$ at large chemical potential.
At zero temperature, the charge current operator appears to be conserved, within linear response, in certain holographic probe brane models of strange metals. At small but finite temperature, we analytically show that the weak non-conservation of this current leads to both a collective "zero sound" mode and a Drude peak in the electrical conductivity. This simultaneously resolves two outstanding puzzles about probe brane theories. The nonlinear dynamics of the current operator itself appears qualitatively different.
We show that the squared speed of sound v_{s}^{2} is bounded from above at high temperatures by the conformal value of 1/3 in a class of strongly coupled four-dimensional field theories, given some mild technical assumptions. This class consists of field theories that have gravity duals sourced by a single scalar field. There are no known examples to date of field theories with gravity duals for which v_{s}^{2} exceeds 1/3 in energetically favored configurations. We conjecture that v_{s}^{2}=1/3 represents an upper bound for a broad class of four-dimensional theories.
Quantum liquids are characterized by the distinctive properties such as the low temperature behavior of heat capacity and the spectrum of low-energy quasiparticle excitations. In particular, at low temperature, Fermi liquids exhibit the zero sound, predicted by L. D. Landau in 1957 and subsequently observed in liquid He-3. In this paper, we ask a question whether such a characteristic behavior is present in theories with holographically dual description. We consider a class of gauge theories with fundamental matter fields whose holographic dual in the appropriate limit is given in terms of the…
We systematically investigate the sound modes of momentum dissipated holographic systems. In particular, we focus on the Einstein-linear axions and the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion theories in four-dimensional bulk spacetime dimensions. The sound velocities of the two theories are computed respectively and the sound attenuation of the Einstein-Maxwell-axion theory is also calculated analytically. We also obtain numeral dispersion relations in the two theories which match with our analytical results. Our results show that the sound velocity of the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory with addition…
We show that there are universal high-temperature relations for transport coefficients of plasmas described by a wide class of field theories with gravity duals. These theories can be viewed as strongly coupled large-Nc conformal field theories deformed by one or more relevant operators. The transport coefficients we study are the speed of sound and bulk viscosity, as well as the conductivity, diffusion coefficient, and charge susceptibility of probe U(1) charges. We show that the sound bound v_s^2 <= 1/3 is satisfied at high temperatures in these theories and also discuss bounds on the diffus…
Using gauge/gravity duality techniques, we discuss the sound-channel retarded correlators of vector and tensor conserved currents in a class of $(2+1)$-dimensional strongly-coupled field theories at zero temperature and finite charge density, assumed to be holographically dual to the extremal Reissner-Nordström AdS$_4$ black hole. Using a combination of analytical and numerical methods, we determine the quasinormal mode spectrum at finite momentum for the coupled gravitational and electromagnetic perturbations, and discuss the appropriate choice of gauge-invariant variables (master fields) in …
We investigate the signatures of Fermi liquid formation in the N=4 super Yang-Mills theory coupled to fundamental hypermultiplet at nonvanishing chemical potential for the global U(1) vector symmetry. At strong 't Hooft coupling the system can be analyzed in terms of the D7 brane dynamics in AdS_5 x S^5 background. The phases with vanishing and finite charge density are separated at zero temperature by a quantum phase transition. In case of vanishing hypermultiplet mass, Karch, Son and Starinets discovered a gapless excitation whose speed equals the speed of sound. We find that this zero sound…
One way to model the strange metal phase of certain materials is via a holographic description in terms of probe D-branes in a Lifshitz spacetime, characterised by a dynamical exponent z. The background geometry is dual to a strongly-interacting quantum critical theory while the probe D-branes are dual to a finite density of charge carriers that can exhibit the characteristic properties of strange metals. We compute holographically the low-frequency and low-momentum form of the charge density and current retarded Green's functions in these systems for massless charge carriers. The results reve…
Hyperscaling violating `strange metal' phase of heavy fermion compounds can be described holographically by probe D-branes in the background of a Lifshitz space-time (dynamical exponent $z$ and spatial dimensions $d$) with hyperscaling violation (corresponding exponent $θ$). Without the hyperscaling violation, strange metals are known to exhibit zero sound mode for $z<2$ analogous to the Fermi liquids. In this paper, we study its fate in the presence of hyperscaling violation and find that in this case the zero sound mode exists for $z < 2(1+|θ|/d)$, where the positivity of the specific heat a…
Within an extended soft wall model, we study the temperature dependence of the lowest vector meson states. Scales are adjusted by using as input the $ρ$ meson mass in vacuum and the velocity of sound from lattice QCD which displays a minimum at $T_{\rm c}$. The melting of the $ρ$ meson occurs at temperatures $\mathcal{O}(T_{\rm c})$.
The plasmon is a ubiquitous collective mode in charged liquids. Due to the long-range Coulomb interaction, the massless zero sound mode of the neutral system acquires a finite plasmon frequency in the long-wavelength limit. In the zero-temperature state of conventional metals -- the Fermi liquid -- the plasmon lives infinitely long at long wavelength when the system is (effectively) translationally invariant. In contrast, we will show that in strongly entangled strange metals the protection of zero sound fails at finite frequency and plasmons are always short lived regardless of their waveleng…
Planar black holes in AdS, which are holographically dual to compressible relativistic fluids, have a long-lived phonon mode that captures the physics of attenuated sound propagation and transports energy in the plasma. We describe the open effective field theory of this fluctuating phonon degree of freedom. The dynamics of the phonon is encoded in a single scalar field whose gravitational coupling has non-trivial spatial momentum dependence. This description fits neatly into the paradigm of classifying gravitational modes by their Markovianity index, depending on whether they are long-lived. …
In this work, we show how states with conserved numbers of dynamical defects (strings, domain walls, etc.) can be understood as possessing generalised global symmetries even when the microscopic origins of these symmetries are unknown. Using this philosophy, we build an effective theory of a $2+1$-dimensional fluid state with two perpendicular sets of immersed elastic line defects. When the number of defects is independently conserved in each set, then the state possesses two one-form symmetries. Normally, such viscoelastic states are described as fluids coupled to Goldstone bosons associated …
We report the continuum limits of the speed of sound, c_s, and the specific heat at constant volume, c_v, in quenched QCD at temperatures of 2Tc and 3Tc. At these temperatures, c_s is within 2-sigma of the ideal gas value, whereas c_v differs significantly from the ideal gas. However, both are compatible with results expected in a theory with conformal symmetry. We investigate effective measures of conformal symmetry in the high temperature phase of QCD.
We investigate the relation between the non-Gaussianities of the primordial perturbations and the sound speed of the tensor perturbations, that is, the propagation speed of the gravitational waves. We find that the sound speed of the tensor perturbations is directly related not to the auto-bispectrum of the tensor perturbations but to the cross-bispectrum of the primordial perturbations, especially, the scalar-tensor-tensor bispectrum. This result is in sharp contrast with the case of the scalar (curvature) perturbations, where their reduced sound speed enhances their auto-bispectrum. Our find…
The implications of a smaller than unity speed of sound of the scalar perturbations during cosmic inflation is studied in terms of a model independent large-$N$ approach. We show that the $(n_s, r)$ plane is non-trivially degenerated when the effects of a different than one speed of sound $c_s$ are taken into account. We also discuss the degeneracies due to $c_s$ in the running of the spectral index, $α_s$. We use the bounds on $c_s$ to constrain such degeneracies.
In this work we compute the entropy density, speed of sound, and the resulting impact on the bulk viscosity to shear viscosity ratio of an ideal Quark Gluon Plasma when the effects of a generalized uncertainty principle are taken into consideration. When the parameter of the generalized uncertainty principle tends to zero, i.e., $α\rightarrow 0$, we obtain the value of the speed of sound for the ideal gas of massless particles, i.e., $c^{2}_{s}\rightarrow 1/3$, and we recover the expected result that the bulk viscosity $ζ\rightarrow 0$ when $α\rightarrow 0$. In addition, in the high temperatur…
In this paper we study the sound speed - $c_s^2$, which is directly related to the classical perturbations - of the dynamical dark energy (DE), especially with an equation of state crossing the cosmological constant boundary in details and show its implications on Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Anisotropy. With the present observational data of CMB, Type Ia Supernova (SNIa) and galaxy clustering, we perform a global analysis to constrain the sound speed of dark energy, using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. We find that the sound speed of dark energy is weakly constrained by current obs…
We consider an ensemble of closed strings in a compact space with stable one cycles and compute the speed of sound resulting from string thermodynamics. Possible applications to the issue of Jeans instability in string gas cosmology are mentioned.
We study the elastic response of planar black hole (BH) solutions in a simple class of holographic models with broken translational invariance. We compute the transverse quasi-normal mode spectrum and the propagation speed of the lowest energy mode. We find that the speed of the lowest mode relates to the BH rigidity modulus as dictated by elasticity theory. This allows to identify these modes as transverse phonons---the pseudo Goldstone bosons of spontaneously broken translational invariance. In addition, we show that these modes have a mass gap controlled by an explicit source of the transla…
We use a WKB approximation to establish a relation between the wavefront velocity in a strongly coupled theory and the local speed of light in a holographic dual, with our main focus put on systems with Lifshitz scaling with dynamical exponent z. We then use Einstein equations to relate the behavior of the local speed of light in the bulk with the null energy condition (NEC) for bulk matter, and we show that it is violated for Lifshitz backgrounds with z<1. We study signal propagation in the gravity dual and show that violations of the NEC are incompatible with causality in the strongly couple…
The first year of observations by the Planck satellite mission shows that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations are consistent with gaussian statistics in the primordial perturbations, a key prediction of the simplest models of inflation. However, there are hints of anomalies in the CMB power spectrum and bispectrum. We check for the possibility that some of these anomalous features have a common physical origin in a transient reduction of the inflaton speed of sound. We do this by exploiting predicted correlations between the power spectrum and bispectrum. Our results suggest tha…
Motivated by scalar-tensor gravities, we consider a theory which contains massless scalar fields with different sound speeds. We derive unitarity relations for partial wave amplitudes of $2 \to 2$ scattering, with explicit formulas for contributions of two-particle intermediate states. Making use of these relations, we obtain unitarity bounds both in the most general case and in the case considered in literature for unit sound speed. These bounds can be used for estimating the strong coupling scale of a pertinent EFT. We illustrate our unitarity relations by explicit calculation to the first n…
In this letter we study adiabatic and isocurvature perturbations in the frame of inflation with multiple sound speeds involved. We suggest this scenario can be realized by a number of generalized scalar fields with arbitrary kinetic forms. These scalars have their own sound speeds respectively, so the propagations of field fluctuations are individual. Specifically, we study a model constructed by two DBI type actions. We find that the critical length scale for the freezing of perturbations corresponds to the maximum sound horizon. Moreover, if the mass term of one field is much lighter than th…
We study sound speed resonance (SSR) mechanism for primordial black hole (PBH) formation in an early universe scenario with inflaton and curvaton being mixed. In this scenario, the total primordial density perturbations can be contributed by the fluctuations from both the inflaton and curvaton fields, in which the inflaton fluctuations lead to the standard adiabatic perturbations, while the sound speed of the curvaton fluctuations are assumed to be oscillating during inflation. Due to the narrow resonance effect of SSR mechanism, we acquire the enhanced primordial density perturbations on smal…
A usual causal requirement on a viable theory of matter is that the speed of sound be at most the speed of light. In view of various recent papers querying this limit, the question is revisited here. We point to various issues confronting theories that violate the usual constraint.
We consider planar hairy black holes in five dimensions with a real scalar field in the Breitenlohner-Freedman window and show that is possible to derive a universal formula for the holographic speed of sound for any mixed boundary conditions of the scalar field. As an example, we locally construct the most general class of planar black holes coupled to a single scalar field in the consistent truncation of type IIB supergravity that preserves the $SO(3)\times SO(3)$ R-symmetry group of the gauge theory. We obtain the speed of sound for different values of the vacuum expectation value of a sing…
We explore a plausible mechanism that the hemispherical power asymmetry in the CMB is produced by the spatial variation of the primordial sound speed parameter. We suggest that in a generalized approach of the $δN$ formalism the local e-folding number may depend on some other primordial parameters besides the initial values of inflaton. Here the $δN$ formalism is extended by considering the effects of a spatially varying sound speed parameter caused by a super-Hubble perturbation of a light field. Using this generalized $δN$ formalism, we systematically calculate the asymmetric primordial spec…
The decaying speed of sound can lead to the emergence of the primordial density perturbation in any expanding phase, even if the expansion is decelerated. Recently, some proposals have been given to implement this mechanism, in which it was found that the primordial spectrum of scalar perturbation can be scale invariant. In this note, we will give more insights for the details of this seeding mechanism.
We report on a novel phenomenon of the resonance effect of primordial density perturbations arisen from a sound speed parameter with an oscillatory behavior, which can generically lead to the formation of primordial black holes in the early Universe. For a general inflaton field, it can seed primordial density fluctuations and their propagation is governed by a parameter of sound speed square. Once if this parameter achieves an oscillatory feature for a while during inflation, a significant non-perturbative resonance effect on the inflaton field fluctuations takes place around a critical lengt…
For any physical system satisfying the Einstein's equations, the comoving curvature perturbations satisfy an equation involving the momentum-dependent effective sound speed, valid for any system with a well defined energy-stress tensor, including multi-fields models of inflation. We derive a general model-independent formula for the effective sound speed of comoving adiabatic perturbations, valid for a generic field-space metric, without assuming any approximation to integrate out entropy perturbations, but expressing the momentum-dependent effective sound speed in terms of the components of t…
We study the effect of non-trivial sound speeds on local-type non-Gaussianity during multiple-field inflation. To this end, we consider a model of multiple-field DBI and use the deltaN formalism to track the super-horizon evolution of perturbations. By adopting a sum separable Hubble parameter we derive analytic expressions for the relevant quantities in the two-field case, valid beyond slow variation. We find that non-trivial sound speeds can, in principle, curve the trajectory in such a way that significant local-type non-Gaussianity is produced. Deviations from slow variation, such as rapid…
We employ the formalism of the effective field theory of inflation to study the effects of a sudden change in the speed of sound of the inflationary perturbations. Such an event generates a feature with high frequency oscillations both in the two- and in the three-point functions of the curvature fluctuations. We study, at first order in the magnitude of the change of the speed of sound, the dependence of the power spectrum and of the bispectrum on the duration of the change. In the limit of a very short duration, the oscillations in the power spectrum persist up to very large momenta and the …
We extend Green's function method developed by Stewart and Gong to calculate the power spectrum of density perturbation in the case with a time-dependent sound speed, and explicitly give the power spectrum and spectral index up to second-order corrections in the slow-roll expansion. The case of tachyon inflation is included as a special case.
It was recently shown that a large value of the tensor to scalar ratio $r$ implies a constraint on the minimum value of the sound speed $c_s$ of primordial curvature perturbations during inflation that is stronger than current bounds coming from non-Gaussianity measurements. Here we consider additional aspects related to the measurement of B-modes that may provide additional leverage to constrain the sound speed parametrizing non-canonical models of inflation. We find that a confirmation of the consistency relation $r = -8 n_t$ between the tensor to scalar ratio $r$ and the tensor spectral ind…
We consider inflation as an effective field theory and study the effects of the addition to the Lagrangian of irrelevant operators with higher powers of first derivatives on its dynamics and observables. We find that significant deviations from the two-derivative dynamics are possible within the regime of validity of the effective field theory. Focusing on monomial potentials we show that the main effect of the terms under consideration is to reduce the speed of sound thereby reducing the tensor fraction, while having little impact on the scalar tilt. Crucially, these effects can arise even wh…
The hemispherical power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background may be explained by the modulation of some primordial cosmological parameter, such as the sound speed of the inflaton. This modulation can be achieved by the perturbation of a light field during inflation. We numerically examine this mechanism and show it can be consistent with current observations. Further, this model predicts that the power asymmetry also exists in the temperature-polarization correlation and polarization autocorrelation with the same shape, and in primordial non-gaussianity of equilateral type with a parti…
In this paper, we study the impact of non-trivial sound on the evolution of cosmological complexity in inflationary period. The vacuum state of curvature perturbation could be treated as squeezed states with two modes, characterized by the two most essential parameters: angle parameter $ϕ_k$ and squeezing parameter $r_k$. Through $Schr\ddot{o}dinger$ equation, one can obtain the corresponding evolution equation of $ϕ_k$ and $r_k$. Subsequently, the quantum circuit complexity between a squeezed vacuum state and squeezed states are evaluated in scalar curvature perturbation with a type of non-tr…