Conformal hydrodynamics in Minkowski and de Sitter spacetimes

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to generate and analyze solutions to conformally invariant relativistic fluid equations in Minkowski and de Sitter spacetimes, with applications to nuclear physics.

Contribution

It introduces a Weyl covariance-based technique to transform known solutions into new forms and explores their generalizations and dual descriptions in AdS space.

Findings

Recast a Minkowski solution as a static flow in de Sitter space

Extended solutions to other dimensions and viscous corrections

Constructed AdS dual of the flow

Abstract

We show how to generate non-trivial solutions to the conformally invariant, relativistic fluid dynamic equations by appealing to the Weyl covariance of the stress tensor. We use this technique to show that a recently studied solution of the relativistic conformally invariant Navier-Stokes equations in four-dimensional Minkowski space can be recast as a static flow in three-dimensional de Sitter space times a line. The simplicity of the de Sitter form of the flow enables us to consider several generalizations of it, including flows in other spacetime dimensions, second order viscous corrections, and linearized perturbations. We also construct the anti-de Sitter dual of the original four-dimensional flow. Finally, we discuss possible applications to nuclear physics.