Transport in Strongly Coupled Quark Matter

Phys Rev Lett. 2020 Dec 11;125(24):241601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.241601.

Abstract

Motivated by the possible presence of deconfined quark matter in neutron stars and their mergers and the important role of transport phenomena in these systems, we perform the first-ever systematic study of different viscosities and conductivities of dense quark matter using the gauge/gravity duality. Using the V-QCD model, we arrive at results that are in qualitative disagreement with the predictions of perturbation theory, which highlights the differing transport properties of the system at weak and strong coupling and calls for caution in the use of the perturbative results in neutron star applications.