Higher derivative holography and temperature dependence of QGP viscosities

A bstract Recent Bayesian analyses of heavy ion collision data have established a non-trivial temperature dependence of the shear and bulk viscosity per entropy. Motivated by this, we consider higher derivative corrections to realistic, bottom-up holographic models of quark-gluon plasma based on five-dimensional Einstein-dilaton theories and determine the dilaton potentials in the higher derivative terms by matching the Bayesian analyses. A byproduct of our analysis is the bulk viscosity that follows from the holographic V-QCD theory. Higher derivative corrections when treated perturbatively lead to tension with existing data. We investigate possible resolutions.