Search for: All records

A<sc>bstract</sc> We revisit the computation of the shear viscosity to entropy ratio in a holographic p-wave superfluid model, focusing on the role of rotational symmetry breaking. We study the interplay between explicit and spontaneous symmetry breaking and derive a simple horizon formula forη/s, which is valid also in the presence of explicit breaking of rotations and is in perfect agreement with the numerical data. We observe that a source which explicitly breaks rotational invariance suppresses the value ofη/sin the broken phase, competing against the effects of spontaneous symmetry breaking. However,η/salways reaches a constant value in the limit of zero temperature, which is never smaller than the Kovtun-Son-Starinets (KSS) bound, 1/4π. This behavior appears to be in contrast with previous holographic anisotropic models which found a power-law vanishing ofη/sat small temperature. This difference is shown to arise from the properties of the near-horizon geometry in the extremal limit. Thus, our construction shows that the breaking of rotations itself does not necessarily imply a violation of the KSS bound.