On October 23 at 4pm Thomas Schaefer (North Carolina State) will the P&A colloquium at Rice
Title:
NEARLY PERFECT FLUIDITY: From Cold Atoms to Hot Quarks and Gluons
Abstract:
A dimensionless measure of fluidity is the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density. In this talk I will argue that fluidity is a sensitive probe of the strength of correlations in a fluid. I will also discuss evidence that the two most perfect fluids ever observed are also the coldest and the hottest fluid ever created in the laboratory. The two fluids are cold atomic gases (~10^-6^ K) that can be probed in optical traps, and the quark gluon plasma (~1012K) created in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC. Remarkably, both fluids come close to a bound on the shear viscosity that was first proposed based on calculations in string theory, involving the non-equilibrium evolution of back holes.
Rice P&A Colloquia are scheduled on Wednesdays at 4:00pm in Brockman Hall for Physics (BRK), room 101.
Graduate students are encouraged to meet the speaker for coffee & cookies between 1h15-2pm in BRK 200.
