Relaxation time of non-conformal plasma

Abstract

We study effective relaxation time of viscous hydrodynamics of strongly coupled non-conformal gauge theory plasma using gauge theory/string theory correspondence. We compute leading corrections to the conformal plasma relaxation time from the relevant deformations due to dim-2 and dim-3 operators. We discuss in details the relaxation time τeff of N = 2* plasma. For a certain choice of masses this theory undergoes a phase transition with divergent specific heat cV ∼ | 1 - Tc / T |- 1 / 2. Although the bulk viscosity remains finite all the way to the critical temperature, we find that τeff diverges near the critical point as τeff ∼ | 1 - Tc / T |- 1 / 2. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.