Ratio of bulk to shear viscosity in a quasigluon plasma: From weak to strong coupling

The ratio of bulk to shear viscosity is expected to exhibit a different behaviour in weakly and in strongly coupled systems. This can be expressed by its dependence on the squared sound velocity. In the high temperature QCD plasma at small running coupling, the viscosity ratio is uniquely determined by a quadratic dependence on the conformality measure, whereas in certain strongly coupled and nearly conformal theories this dependence is linear. Employing an effective kinetic theory of quasiparticle excitations with medium-modified dispersion relation, we analyze the ratio of bulk to shear viscosity of the gluon plasma. We show that in this approach, depending on the temperature, the viscosity ratio exhibits either of these dependencies found by means of weak coupling perturbative or strong coupling holographic techniques. The turning point between the two different dependencies is located around the maximum in the scaled interaction measure. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.