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Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 191601 (2008) [4 pages]

Viscosity Bound and Causality Violation

Mauro Brigante,1 Hong Liu,1 Robert C. Myers,2 Stephen Shenker,3 and Sho Yaida3
1Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
2Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada
3Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
Received 3 March 2008; published 15 May 2008

In recent work we showed that, for a class of conformal field theories (CFT) with Gauss-Bonnet gravity dual, the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, eta/s, could violate the conjectured Kovtun-Starinets-Son viscosity bound, eta/s>=1/4pi. In this Letter we argue, in the context of the same model, that tuning eta/s below (16/25)(1/4pi) induces microcausality violation in the CFT, rendering the theory inconsistent. This is a concrete example in which inconsistency of a theory and a lower bound on viscosity are correlated, supporting the idea of a possible universal lower bound on eta/s for all consistent theories.

©2008 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.191601
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.191601
PACS: 11.25.Tq; 12.38.Mh; 25.75.-q

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