Bulk viscosity of gauge theory plasma at strong coupling

TL;DR

This paper proposes a lower bound on the bulk viscosity of strongly coupled gauge theory plasmas, demonstrating its finiteness at critical points and estimating its value for quark-gluon plasma at RHIC.

Contribution

It introduces a lower bound on bulk viscosity and analyzes its behavior at critical points in strongly coupled gauge theories.

Findings

Bulk viscosity remains finite at a critical point with divergent specific heat.

Explicit example with N=2^* gauge theory plasma supports the bound.

Estimated bulk viscosity for QGP at RHIC.

Abstract

We propose a lower bound on bulk viscosity of strongly coupled gauge theory plasmas. Using explicit example of the N=2^* gauge theory plasma we show that the bulk viscosity remains finite at a critical point with a divergent specific heat. We present an estimate for the bulk viscosity of QGP plasma at RHIC.