A calculation of the shear viscosity in SU(3) gluodynamics

Abstract

We perform a lattice Monte-Carlo calculation of the two-point functions of the energy-momentum tensor at finite temperature in the SU(3) gauge theory. Unprecedented precision is obtained thanks to a multi-level algorithm. The lattice operators are renormalized non-perturbatively and the classical discretization errors affecting the correlators are corrected for. A robust upper bound for the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio is derived, eta/s < 1.0, and our best estimate is eta/s = 0.134(33) at T=1.65Tc under the assumption of smoothness of the spectral function in the low-frequency region.

Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures