Effective field theories of dissipative fluids with one-form symmetries

Vardhan, Shreya (author), Grozdanov, Sašo (author), Leutheusser, Samuel (author), Liu, Hong (author)

A system with a one-form global symmetry at finite temperature can be viewed as a dissipative fluid of string-like objects. In this work, we classify and construct the most general effective field theories for hydrodynamics of such string fluids, in a probe limit where the one-form charge density is decoupled from the energy-momentum tensor. We show that at leading order in the derivative expansion, there are two distinct types of diffusive transport in a string fluid depending on the discrete spacetime symmetries present in it. One particular application of interest is magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), where the effective field theories describe the diffusion of magnetic field lines. Due to the distinction between the effective field theories for different discrete symmetries, we show that the MHD of a fluid with charge conjugation symmetry is qualitatively different from that of a neutron star, which we previously discussed in [1]. The explicit effective actions that we write down can be used to obtain the dispersion relations ω(k) up to cubic order in momenta for each of the different discrete symmetry choices. As another application of this formalism, we show that when the one-form symmetry is spontaneously broken, the effective action reduces to the Maxwell theory. This confirms the interpretation of the photon as a Goldstone boson arising from the spontaneous breaking of a one-form symmetry.

• Language: English
• Keywords: effective field theories, field theory, hydrodynamics, symmetries
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FMF - Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: 39 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 2025, art. no. ǂ184
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-169368
• UDC: 53
• ISSN on article: 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP05(2025)184
• COBISS.SI-ID: 237092867
• Publication date in RUL: 26.05.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: The journal of high energy physics
• Shortened title: J. high energy phys.
• Publisher: SISSA
• ISSN: 1029-8479
• COBISS.SI-ID: 1314148

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: efektivne teorije polja, teorija polja, hidrodinamika, simetrije