Gravity and hydrodynamics: lectures on the fluid-gravity correspondence

Abstract

We discuss recent developments in the hydrodynamic description of strongly coupled conformal field theories using the AdS/CFT correspondence. In particular, we review aspects of the fluid-gravity correspondence which provides a map between a class of inhomogeneous, dynamical, black hole solutions in asymptotically AdS spacetimes and arbitrary fluid flows in the strongly interacting boundary field theory. We explain how the geometric duals to the fluid dynamics are constructed in a boundary derivative expansion and use the construction to extract the hydrodynamic transport coefficients. In addition, we also describe the recent developments extending the correspondence to incorporate matter fields and to non-relativistic systems. Based on lectures given at the CERN Winter School on Supergravity, Strings and Gauge Theories, Geneva, Switzerland (February 2009).