Shear viscosity of pion gas

Abstract

Using chiral perturbation theory we investigate the QCD shear viscosity ($η$) to entropy density ($s$) ratio below the deconfinement temperature ($\sim 170$ MeV) with zero baryon number density. It is found that $η/s$ of QCD is monotonically decreasing in temperature ($T$) and reaches 0.6 with estimated $\sim 50%$ uncertainty at T=120 MeV. A naive extrapolation of the leading order result shows that $η/s$ reaches the $1/4π$ minimum bound proposed by Kovtun, Son, and Starinets using string theory methods at $T\sim 210$ MeV. This suggests a phase transition or cross over might occur at $T\lesssim 210$ MeV in order for the bound to remain valid. Also, it is natural for $η/s$ to stay close to the minimum bound around the phase transition temperature as was recently found in heavy ion collisions.

13 pages, 4 figures, A contribution to lecture notes for ECT* school on RG and EFT (2006), the draft has already been submitted to editor. Some references were added