Causality and existence of solutions of relativistic viscous fluid dynamics with gravity

By F. S. Bemfica, M. Disconzi, J. Noronha. Physical Review D, 2017

165 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A new approach is described to help improve the foundations of relativistic viscous fluid dynamics and its coupling to general relativity. Focusing on neutral conformal fluids constructed solely in terms of hydrodynamic variables, we derive the most general viscous energy-momentum tensor yielding equations of motion of second order in the derivatives, which is shown to provide a novel type of generalization of the relativistic Navier-Stokes equations for which causality holds. We show how this energy-momentum tensor may be derived from conformal kinetic theory. We rigorously prove existence, uniqueness, and causality of solutions of this theory (in the full nonlinear regime) both in a Minkowski background and also when the fluid is dynamically coupled to Einstein's equations. Linearized disturbances around equilibrium in Minkowski spacetime are stable in this causal theory. A numerical study reveals the presence of an out-of-equilibrium hydrodynamic attractor for a rapidly expanding fluid. Further properties are also studied and a brief discussion of how this approach can be generalized to non-conformal fluids is presented.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d332cf32baf0a76617ec6e7bbd246f09f215c920

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

First-order relativistic hydrodynamics is stable (2019, background): “[19].”