Holographic transport in anisotropic plasmas

We study energy-momentum and charge transport in strongly interacting holographic quantum field theories in an anisotropic thermal state by contrasting three different holographic methods to compute transport coefficients: standard holographic calculation of retarded Green’s functions, a method based on the null-focusing equation near horizon and the novel method based on background variations. Employing these methods we compute anisotropic shear and bulk viscosities and conductivities with anisotropy induced externally, for example by an external magnetic field. We show that all three methods yield consistent results. The novel method allows us to read off the transport coefficients from the horizon data and express them in analytic form from which we derive universal relations among them. Furthermore we extend the method based on the null-focusing equation to Gauss-Bonnet theory to compute higher derivative corrections to the aforementioned transport coefficients. Published by the American Physical Society 2024