Minimum of $\eta /s$ and the phase transition of the Linear Sigma Model in the large-N limit

Abstract

We reexamine the possibility of employing the viscosity over entropy density ratio as a diagnostic tool to identify a phase transition in hadron physics to the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma and other circumstances where direct measurement of the order parameter or the free energy may be difficult. It has been conjectured that the minimum of eta/s does indeed occur at the phase transition. We now make a careful assessment in a controled theoretical framework, the Linear Sigma Model at large-N, and indeed find that the minimum of eta/s occurs near the second order phase transition of the model due to the rapid variation of the order parameter (here the sigma vacuum expectation value) at a temperature slightly smaller than the critical one.

Comments: 22 pages, 19 figures, v2, some references and several figures added, typos corrected and certain arguments clarified, revised for PRD