Dissipating Faster than Light

ORAL  · Invited

Abstract

Back in 1940, Eckart attempted to make Navier–Stokes hydrodynamics compatible with Einstein's theory of special relativity. It didn't age well. About 40 years later, physicists admitted defeat and embraced a new contender: Israel–Stewart theory. Another 40 years roll by, and here we are, realizing that this second attempt can also fail us, sometimes. It looks like dissipation has been playing a prank on Einstein himself. What is happening?

*This work is supported by a Vanderbilt Seeding Success Grant, a MERAC Foundation prize grant, an Isaac Newton Trust Grant, and funding from the Cambridge Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

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Publication: - LG: "Can We Make Sense of Dissipation without Causality?" [Physical Review X, 12, 041001 (Oct 2022)]
- LG: "Bounds on transport from hydrodynamic stability" [Physics Letters B, Volume 840, 10 May 2023, 137854 (May 2023)]
- LG; Antonelli, M.; Haskell, B.: "Thermodynamic Stability Implies Causality" [Physical Review Letters 128, 010606 (Jan 2022)]
- LG; Hirvonen, H.; Paquet, J.F.; Singh, M.; Rocha, G.: "Acausality-driven instabilities in relativistic viscous hydrodynamics"
[Physical Review D 112, 076018 (Oct 2025)]

Presenters

  • Lorenzo Gavassino

    • University of Cambridge, UK
    • University of Cambridge

Authors

  • Lorenzo Gavassino

    • University of Cambridge, UK
    • University of Cambridge