Momentum relaxation in holographic massive gravity

Abstract

We study the effects of momentum relaxation on observables in a recently proposed holographic model in which the conservation of momentum in the field theory is broken by the presence of a bulk graviton mass. In the hydrodynamic limit, we show that these effects can be incorporated by a simple modification of the energy-momentum conservation equation to account for the dissipation of momentum over a single characteristic time scale. We compute this time scale as a function of the graviton mass terms and identify the previously known ``wall of stability'' as the point at which this relaxation time scale becomes negative. We also calculate analytically the zero temperature AC conductivity at low frequencies. In the limit of a small graviton mass this reduces to the simple Drude form, and we compute the corrections to this which are important for larger masses. Finally, we undertake a preliminary investigation of the stability of the zero temperature black brane solution of this model, and rule out spatially modulated instabilities of a certain kind.