The Hydrohedron: Bootstrapping Relativistic Hydrodynamics

Abstract

As an effective theory, relativistic hydrodynamics is fixed by symmetries up to a set of transport coefficients. A lot of effort has been devoted to explicit calculations of these coefficients. Here we propose a shift in perspective: we deploy bootstrap techniques to rule out theories that are inconsistent with microscopic causality. What remains is a universal convex geometry in the space of transport coefficients, which we call the hydrohedron. The landscape of all consistent theories necessarily lie inside or on the edges of the hydrohedron. We analytically construct cross-sections of the hydrohedron corresponding to bounds on transport coefficients that appear in sound and diffusion modes for theories without stochastic fluctuations.

Comments: 10 pages + appendices, 2 figures. Added N=4 SYM, MIS, BDNK, kinetic theory to the hydrohedron plots. Some technical details moved to appendices