Thermal backflow in CFTs

Banks, Elliot; Donos, Aristomenis; Gauntlett, Jerome P.; Griffin, Tom; Melgar, Luis

Abstract

We study the thermal transport properties of general conformal field theories (CFTs) on curved spacetimes in the leading order viscous hydrodynamic limit. At the level of linear response, we show that the thermal transport is governed by a system of forced linearized Navier-Stokes equations on a curved space. Our setup includes CFTs in flat spacetime that have been deformed by spatially dependent and periodic local temperature variations or strains that have been applied to the CFT, and hence is relevant to CFTs arising in condensed matter systems at zero charge density. We provide specific examples of deformations which lead to thermal backflow driven by a dc source: that is, the thermal currents locally flow in the opposite direction to the applied dc thermal source. We also consider thermal transport for relativistic quantum field theories that are not conformally invariant.

Citation

Banks, E., Donos, A., Gauntlett, J. P., Griffin, T., & Melgar, L. (2017). Thermal backflow in CFTs. Physical Review D, 95(2), Article 025022. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.95.025022

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 6, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Jan 30, 2017
• Publication Date: Jan 30, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 5, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 10, 2017
• Journal: Physical Review D
• Print ISSN: 2470-0010
• Electronic ISSN: 2470-0029
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 95
• Issue: 2
• Article Number: 025022
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.95.025022
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1355991