Shear viscosity and instability from third order Lovelock gravity

Abstract

We calculate the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density for charged black branes in third order Lovelock theory. For chargeless black branes, the result turns out to be consistent with the prediction made by Brustein and Medved [Phys. Rev. D 79, 021901 (2009)].. We find that the third order Lovelock gravity term does not contribute to causality violation unlike the Gauss-Bonnet term. The stability of the black brane again requires the value of the Lovelock coupling constant to be bounded by 1/4 in the infinite dimensionality limit.