Shear Viscosity to Entropy Density Ratio of QCD below the Deconfinement Temperature

Abstract

Using chiral perturbation theory we investigate the QCD shear viscosity to entropy density ratio below the deconfinement temperature (~170 MeV) with zero baryon number density. It is found that the viscosity to entropy density ratio of QCD is monotonically decreasing in temperature (T) and reaches 0.6 with estimated ~50% uncertainty at T=120 MeV. A naive extrapolation of the leading order result shows that the ratio reaches the 1/(4 pi) minimum bound proposed by Kovtun, Son, and Starinets using string theory methods at T~200 MeV. This suggests a phase transition or cross over might occur at T less than 200 MeV in order for the bound to remain valid. Also, it is natural for the ratio to stay close to the minimum bound around the phase transition temperature as was recently found in heavy ion collisions.