Preferred extremals of Kähler action and perfect fluids

Lubos Motl had an interesting article about Perfect fluids, string theory, and black holes. It of course takes some self discipline to get over the M-theory propaganda without getting very angry. Indeed, the article starts with

The omnipresence of very low-viscosity fluids in the observable world is one of the amazing victories of string theory. The value of the minimum viscosity seems to follow a universal formula that can be derived from quantum gravity - i.e. from string theory.

The first sentence is definitely something which surpasses all records in the recorded history of super string hype (for records see Not-Even Wrong). At the end of the propaganda strike Lubos however explains in an enjoyable manner some basic facts about perfect fluids, super-fluids, and viscosity and mentions the effective absence of non-diagonal components of stress tensor as a mathematical correlate for the absence of shear viscosity often identified as viscosity. This comment actually stimulated this posting.

In any case, almost perfect fluids seems to be abundant in Nature. For instance, QCD plasma was originally thought to behave like gas and therefore have a rather high viscosity to entropy density ratio x= η/s. Already RHIC found that it however behaves like almost perfect fluid with x near to the minimum predicted by AdS/CFT. The findings from LHC gave additional conform the discovery (see this). Also Fermi gas is predicted on basis of experimental observations to have at low temperatures a low viscosity roughly 5-6 times the minimal value (see this). This behavior is of course not a prediction of superstring theory but only demonstrates that AdS/CFT correspondence applying to conformal field theories as a new kind of calculational tool allows to make predictions in such parameter regions where standard methods fail. This is fantastic but has nothing to do with predictions of string theory.

In the following the argument that the preferred extremals of Kähler action are perfect fluids apart from the symmetry breaking to space-time sheets is developed. The argument requires some basic formulas summarized first.

The physics oriented reader not working with hydrodynamics and possibly irritated from the observation that after all these years he actually still has a rather tenuous understanding of viscosity as a mathematical notion and willing to refresh his mental images about concrete experimental definitions as well as tensor formulas, can look the Wikipedia article about viscosity. Here one can find also the definition of the viscous part of the stress energy tensor linear in velocity (oddness in velocity relates directly to second law). The symmetric part of the gradient of velocity gives the viscous part of the stress-energy tensor as a tensor linear in velocity. This term decomposes to bulk viscosity and shear viscosity. Bulk viscosity gives a pressure like contribution due to friction. Shear viscosity corresponds to the traceless part of the velocity gradient often called just viscosity. This contribution to the stress tensor is non-diagonal.

1. The symmetric part of the gradient of velocity gives the viscous part of the stress-energy tensor as a tensor linear in velocity. Velocity gardient decomposes to a term traceless tensor term and a term reducing to scalar.

   ∂_iv_j+∂_jv_i= (2/3)∂_kv^kg_ij+ (∂_iv_j+∂_jv_i-(2/3)∂_kv^kg_ij).

   The viscous contribution to stress tensor is given in terms of this decomposition as

   σ_visc,ij= ζ∂_kv^kg_ij+η (∂_iv_j+∂_jv_i-(2/3)∂_kv^kg_ij).

   From dFⁱ= T^ijS_j it is clear that bulk viscosity ζ gives to energy momentum tensor a pressure like contribution having interpretation in terms of friction opposing. Shear viscosity η corresponds to the traceless part of the velocity gradient often called just viscosity. This contribution to the stress tensor is non-diagonal and corresponds to momentum transfer in directions not parallel to momentum and makes the flow rotational. This term is essential for the thermal conduction and thermal conductivity vanishes for ideal fluids.

2. The 3-D total stress tensor can be written as

   σ_ij= ρ v_iv_j-pg_ij +σ_visc,ij.

   The generalization to a 4-D relativistic situation is simple. One just adds terms corresponding to energy density and energy flow to obtain

   T^αβ= (ρ-p) u^α u^β+pg^αβ-σ_visc^αβ .

   Here u^α denotes the local four-velocity satisfying u^αu_α=1. The sign factors relate to the concentions in the definition of Minkowski metric ((1,-1,-1,-1)).

3. If the flow is such that the flow parameters associated with the flow lines integrate to a global flow parameter one can identify new time coordinate t as this flow parametger. This means a transition to a coordinate system in which fluid is at rest everywhere (comoving coordinates in cosmology) so that energy momentum tensor reduces to a diagonal term plus viscous term.

   T^αβ= (ρ-p) g^tt δ_t^α δ_t^β+pg^αβ-σ_visc^αβ .

   In this case the vanishing of the viscous term means that one has perfect fluid in strong sense.

   The existence of a global flow parameter means that one has

   v_i= Ψ ∂_iΦ .

   Ψ and Φ depend on space-time point. The proportionality to a gradient of scalar Φ implies that Φ can be taken as a global time coordinate. If this condition is not satisfied, the perfect fluid property makes sense only locally.

AdS/CFT correspondence allows to deduce a lower limit for the coefficient of shear viscosity as

x= η/s≥ hbar/4π .

This formula holds true in units in which one has k_B=1 so that temperature has unit of energy.

What makes this interesting from TGD view is that in TGD framework perfect fluid property in approriately generalized sense indeed characterizes locally the preferred extremals of Kähler action defining space-time surface.

1. Kähler action is Maxwell action with U(1) gauge field replaced with the projection of CP₂ Kähler form so that the four CP₂ coordinates become the dynamical variables at QFT limit. This means enormous reduction in the number of degrees of freedom as compared to the ordinary unifications. The field equations for Kähler action define the dynamics of space-time surfaces and this dynamics reduces to conservation laws for the currents assignable to isometries. This means that the system has a hydrodynamic interpretation. This is a considerable difference to ordinary Maxwell equations. Notice however that the "topological" half of Maxwell's equations (Faraday's induction law and the statement that no non-topological magnetic are possible) is satisfied.

2. Even more, the resulting hydrodynamical system allows an interpretation in terms of a perfect fluid. The general ansatz for the preferred extremals of field equations assumes that various conserved currents are proportional to a vector field characterized by so called Beltrami property. The coefficient of proportionality depends on space-time point and the conserved current in question. Beltrami fields by definition is a vector field such that the time parameters assignable to its flow lines integrate to single global coordinate. This is highly non-trivial and one of the implications is almost topological QFT property due to the fact that Kähler action reduces to a boundary term assignable to wormhole throats which are light-like 3-surfaces at the boundaries of regions of space-time with Euclidian and Minkowskian signatures. The Euclidian regions (or wormhole throats, depends on one's tastes ) define what I identify as generalized Feynman diagrams.

   Beltrami property means that if the time coordinate for a space-time sheet is chosen to be this global flow parameter, all conserved currents have only time component. In TGD framework energy momentum tensor is replaced with a collection of conserved currents assignable to various isometries and the analog of energy momentum tensor complex constructed in this manner has no counterparts of non-diagonal components. Hence the preferred extremals allow an interpretation in terms of perfect fluid without any viscosity.

This argument justifies the expectation that TGD Universe is characterized by the presence of low-viscosity fluids. Real fluids of course have a non-vanishing albeit small value of x. What causes the failure of the exact perfect fluid property?

1. Many-sheetedness of the space-time is the underlying reason. Space-time surface decomposes into finite-sized space-time sheets containing topologically condensed smaller space-time sheets containing.... Only within given sheet perfect fluid property holds true and fails at wormhole contacts and because the sheet has a finite size. As a consequence, the global flow parameter exists only in given length and time scale. At imbedding space level and in zero energy ontology the phrasing of the same would be in terms of hierarchy of causal diamonds (CDs).

2. The so called eddy viscosity is caused by eddies (vortices) of the flow. The space-time sheets glued to a larger one are indeed analogous to eddies so that the reduction of viscosity to eddy viscosity could make sense quite generally. Also the phase slippage phenomenon of super-conductivity meaning that the total phase increment of the super-conducting order parameter is reduced by a multiple of 2π in phase slippage so that the average velocity proportional to the increment of the phase along the channel divided by the length of the channel is reduced by a quantized amount.

   The standard arrangement for measuring viscosity involves a lipid layer flowing along plane. The velocity of flow with respect to the surface increases from v=0 at the lower boundary to v_upper at the upper boundary of the layer: this situation can be regarded as outcome of the dissipation process and prevails as long as energy is feeded into the system. The reduction of the velocity in direction orthogonal to the layer means that the flow becomes rotational during dissipation leading to this stationary situation.

   This suggests that the elementary building block of dissipation process corresponds to a generation of vortex identifiable as cylindrical space-time sheets parallel to the plane of the flow and orthogonal to the velocity of flow and carrying quantized angular momentum. One expects that vortices have a spectrum labelled by quantum numbers like energy and angular momentum so that dissipation takes in discrete steps by the generation of vortices which transfer the energy and angular momentum to environment and in this manner generate the velocity gradient.

3. The quantization of the parameter x is suggestive in this framework. If entropy density and viscosity are both proportional to the density n of the eddies, the value of x would equal to the ratio of the quanta of entropy and kinematic viscosity η/n for single eddy if all eddies are identical. The quantum would be hbar/4π in the units used and the suggestive interpretation is in terms of the quantization of angular momentum. One of course expects a spectrum of eddies so that this simple prediction should hold true only at temperatures for which the excitation energies of vortices are above the thermal energy. The increase of the temperature would suggest that gradually more and more vortices come into play and that the ratio increases in a stepwise manner bringing in mind quantum Hall effect. In TGD Universe the value of hbar can be large in some situations so that the quantal character of dissipation could become visible even macroscopically. Whether this situation with large hbar is encountered even in the case of QCD plasma is an interesting question.

The following poor man's argument tries to make the idea about quantization a little bit more concrete.

1. The vortices transfer momentum parallel to the plane from the flow. Therefore they must have momentum parallel to the flow given by the total cm momentum of the vortex. Before continuing some notations are needed. Let the densities of vortices and absorbed vortices be n and n_abs respectively. Denote by v_par resp. v_perp the components of cm momenta parallel to the main flow resp. perpendicular to the plane boundary plane. Let m be the mass of the vortex. Denote by S are parallel to the boundary plane.

2. The flow of momentum component parallel to the main flow due to the absorbed at S is

   n_abs m v_par v_perp S .

   This momentum flow must be equal to the viscous force

   F_visc = η (v_par/d)× S .

   From this one obtains

   η= n_absm v_perpd .

   If the entropy density is due to the vortices, it equals apart from possible numerical factors to

   s= n

   so that one has

   η/s=mv_perpd .

   This quantity should have lower bound x=hbar/4π and perhaps even quantized in multiples of x, Angular momentum quantization suggests strongly itself as origin of the quantization.

3. Local momentum conservation requires that the comoving vortices are created in pairs with opposite momenta and thus propagating with opposite velocities v_perp. Only one half of vortices is absorbed so that one has n_abs=n/2. Vortex has quantized angular momentum associated with its internal rotation. Angular momentum is generated to the flow since the vortices flowing downwards are absorbed at the boundary surface.

   Suppose that the distance of their center of mass lines parallel to plane is D=ε d, ε a numerical constant not too far from unity. The vortices of the pair moving in opposite direction have same angular momentum mv_perpD/2 relative to their center of mass line between them. Angular momentum conservation requires that the sum these relative angular momenta cancels the sum of the angular momenta associated with the vortices themselves. Quantization for the total angular momentum for the pair of vortices gives

   η/s= nhbar/ε

   Quantization condition would give

   ε =4π .

   One should understand why D=4π d - four times the circumference for the largest circle contained by the boundary layer- should define the minimal distance between the vortices of the pair. This distance is larger than the distance d for maximally sized vortices of radius d/2 just touching. This distance obviously increases as the thickness of the boundary layer increasess suggesting that also the radius of the vortices scales like d.

4. One cannot of course take this detailed model too literally. What is however remarkable that quantization of angular momentum and dissipation mechanism based on vortices identified as space-time sheets indeed could explain why the lower bound for the ratio η/s is so small.

For background see the chapter Does the Modified Dirac Equation Define the Fundamental Action Principle? of "Quantum TGD as Infinite-dimensional Spinor Geometry".