Plasma conductivity at finite coupling

TL;DR

This paper calculates how finite coupling corrections affect the electrical conductivity of strongly-coupled supersymmetric plasma using string theory, finding an enhancement consistent with weak-coupling expectations.

Contribution

It provides the first computation of finite 't Hooft coupling corrections to plasma conductivity using full string theory corrections.

Findings

Conductivity increases with finite coupling corrections.

Results agree with weak-coupling perturbative trends.

Enhancement of conductivity is quantitatively characterized.

Abstract

By taking into account the full order(\alpha'^3) type IIB string theory corrections to the supergravity action, we compute the leading finite 't Hooft coupling order(\lambda^{-3/2}) corrections to the conductivity of strongly-coupled SU(N) {\cal {N}}=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma in the large N limit. We find that the conductivity is enhanced by the corrections, in agreement with the trend expected from previous perturbative weak-coupling computations.