The Fate of the Sound and Diffusion in Holographic Magnetic Field

Abstract

It was shown in arXiv:0810.4094 [hep-th] that in the presence of the magnetic field the sound waves in (2+1) dimensional plasma disappear and are replaces by a diffusive mode. Similarly, the shear and charge diffusion fluctuations form a subdiffusive mode. However, since the limit of small magnetic field does not commute with the hydrodynamic limit it is not obvious whether or not these modes are stable under higher order corrections. Using AdS/CFT correspondence we show that in the case of M2-brane plasma these modes do exist as we find the corresponding supergravity solutions. This allowed us to compute the conductivity and the shear viscosity to all orders in magnetic field. We find that the viscosity to entropy ratio saturates the Kovtun-Son-Starinets bound. This extends the universality property of the shear viscosity to the case of the strongly coupled plasma in external magnetic field.