Lifshitz holography: hydrodynamics and the large-D limit

2026-07-22

Holography is the powerful statement that two seemingly distinct theories, a theory of gravity and a field theory, describe the same physics. In this proposal I focus on Lifshitz holography, a not very well understood version of the duality, that relates non-relativistic strongly-coupled field theories and gravity realized on Lifshitz spacetimes. The aim of the project is to further develop Lifshitz holography by taking advantage of recent progress in non-relativistic hydrodynamics and the development of the large-D tool. The research objectives(ROs), each forming a separate work package, are: - Flesh out the connections between gravity and fluid dynamics for non-relativistic theories, by developing the membrane paradigm for Lifshitz black holes. This will not only be a milestone in our understanding of Lifshitz holography itself and prepare the ground for a fully-fledged non-relativistic fluid/gravity correspondence, but it will also elucidate the infrared properties of these theories, identify universal behaviours in transport coefficients and other observables and explore the generality of recently-proposed connections between hydrodynamics, non-hydrodynamic modes and chaos. - Extend the large-D tool to Lifshitz spacetimes and then use it to study holographically thermal transport in Lifshitz theories. The large-D is a technical development in general relativity realised on Anti-deSitter and flat spacetimes that leads to major simplifications of gravitational dynamics and thus eases the complexity of calculations. This objective will impact both holographic studies and gravity considerations in Lifshitz spacetimes. To achieve these ROs, I will mainly study various aspects of quasinormal modes. These modes not only contain information about black hole dynamics in the sense of characterising the dissipation of the perturbed horizon, but they are also associated with poles of the corresponding real-time Green's functions in a holographically dual theory.

Ireland

2026-02-01