Causality of fluid dynamics for high-energy nuclear collisions

Dissipative relativistic fluid dynamics is not always causal and can favor superluminal signal propagation under certain circumstances. On the other hand, high-energy nuclear collisions have a microscopic description in terms of QCD and are expected to follow the causality principle of special relativity. We discuss under which conditions the fluid evolutions for a radial expansion are hyperbolic and how the properties of the solutions are encoded in the associated characteristic curves. The expansion dynamics is causal in relativistic sense if the characteristic velocities are smaller than the speed of light. We obtain a concrete inequality from this constraint and discuss how it can be violated for certain initial conditions. We argue that causality poses a bound to the applicability of relativistic fluid dynamics. }Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures; Added references, corrected typos, added discussion as section 2, results unchange

Inconsistencies of Massive Charged Gravitating Higher Spins

We examine the causality and degrees of freedom (DoF) problems encountered by charged, gravitating, massive higher spin fields. For spin s=3/2, making the metric dynamical yields improved causality bounds. These involve only the mass, the product eM_P of the charge and Planck mass and the cosmological constant \Lambda. The bounds are themselves related to a gauge invariance of the timelike component of the field equation at the onset of acausality. While propagation is causal in arbitrary E/M backgrounds, the allowed mass ranges of parameters are of Planck order. Generically, interacting spins s>3/2 are subject to DoF violations as well as to acausality; the former must be overcome before analysis of the latter can even begin. Here we review both difficulties for charged s=2 and show that while a g-factor of 1/2 solves the DoF problem, acausality persists for any g. Separately we establish that no s=2 theory --DoF preserving or otherwise -- can be tree unitary.Comment: 25 pages, late

Loop quantum gravity corrections to gravitational wave dispersion

Cosmological tensor perturbations equations are derived for Hamiltonian cosmology based on Ashtekar's formulation of general relativity, including typical quantum gravity effects in the Hamiltonian constraint as they are expected from loop quantum gravity. This translates to corrections of the dispersion relation for gravitational waves. The main application here is the preservation of causality which is shown to be realized due to the absence of anomalies in the effective constraint algebra used.Comment: 27 page