Strongly Interacting Low Viscosity Matter Created in Heavy Ion Collisions

Substantial collective flow is observed in collisions between large nuclei at high energy, as evidenced by single-particle transverse momentum distributions and by azimuthal correlations among the produced particles. The data are well-reproduced by perfect fluid dynamics. In a separate development, calculation of the dimensionless ratio of shear viscosity eta to entropy density s by Kovtun, Son and Starinets within AdS/CFT yields eta/s = 1/4pi, and they conjectured that this is a lower bound for any physical system. It is shown that the transition from hadrons to quarks and gluons has behavior similar to helium, nitrogen, and water at and near their phase transitions in the ratio eta/s. Therefore it is possible that experimental measurements can pinpoint the location of this transition or rapid crossover in QCD via the viscosity to entropy ratio in addition to and independently of the equation of state.