The shear viscosity of the non-commutative plasma

Abstract

We compute the shear viscosity of the non-commutative N ≤ 4 super Yang-Mills quantum field theory at strong coupling using the dual supergravity background. Special interest derives from the fact that the background presents an intrinsic anisotropy in space through the distinction of commutative and non-commutative directions. Despite this anisotropy the analysis exhibits the ubiquitous result η/s ≤ 1/4π for two different shear channels. In order to derive this result, we show that the boundary energy momentum tensor must couple to the open string metric. As a byproduct we compute the renormalised holographic energy momentum tensor and show that it coincides with one in the commutative theory. © SISSA 2007.