A holographic perspective on Gubser-Mitra conjecture

We point out an elementary thermodynamics fact that whenever the specific heat of a system is negative, the speed of sound in such a media is imaginary. The latter observation presents a proof of Gubser-Mitra conjecture on the relation between dynamical and thermodynamic instabilities for gravitational backgrounds with a translationary invariant horizon, provided such geometries can be interpreted as holographic duals to finite temperature gauge theories. It further identifies a tachyonic mode of the Gubser-Mitra instability (the lowest quasinormal mode of the corresponding horizon geometry) as a holographic dual to a sound wave in a dual gauge theory. As a specific example, we study sound wave propagation in Little String Theory (LST) compactified on a two-sphere. We find that at high energies (for temperatures close to the LST Hagedorn temperature) the speed of sound is purely imaginary. This implies that the lowest quasinormal mode of the finite temperature Maldacena-Nunez background is tachyonic. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.