Anomalous Hydrodynamics

Abstract

Our goal is to examine the role of anomalies in the hydrodynamic regime of field theories. We employ methods based on gauge/gravity duality to examine R-charge anomalies in the hydrodynamic regime of stronly t'Hooft coupled, large N, N = 4 Super Yang-Mills. We use a single particle spectrum treatment based on the familiar "level crossing" picture of chiral anomalies to investigate thermalized, massless QED. In each case, we work in the presence of a homogeneous background magnetic field, and find the same result. Regardless of whether a paricular current is anomalously non-conserved or not, as long as it participates in an anomalous 3-pt. correlator, its constitutive relation recieves a new term, proportional to a product of the anomaly coefficient, the magnetic field, and any charge density participating in the anomaly. This agrees with results found by Alekseev et.al. for QED. We include a general, symmetry based argument for the presence of such terms, and use linear response theory to determine their coefficients in a model with anomalous global charges. This last method we apply to briefly examine baryon transport in chiral QCD in a strong magnetic field.