Violation of energy conditions and entropy production in holographic Bjorken flow

TL;DR

This paper shows that in a strongly coupled plasma undergoing Bjorken flow, energy conditions can be violated during hydrodynamization, influenced by quantum effects and entropy dynamics, revealing new phenomena beyond classical hydrodynamics.

Contribution

It uncovers dynamically-driven violations of energy conditions in holographic Bjorken flow and links entropy production patterns to these violations, highlighting quantum effects in transport.

Findings

Violations of dominant and weak energy conditions occur during hydrodynamization.

A period of zero entropy production precedes energy condition violations.

Quantum effects in transport can induce phenomena absent in classical descriptions.

Abstract

We demonstrate that a Bjorken expanding strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ Supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma can display dynamically-driven violations of the dominant and also the weak energy condition during hydrodynamization. In addition, we find that a period of vanishing entropy production in far-from-equilibrium stages induces later violations of the dominant energy condition in the strongly coupled plasma. Such violations cannot occur in a classical description of hydrodynamization and suggest that the inclusion of quantum effects in transport can lead to new phenomena in these regimes, even for systems without anomalies or spin.