For conformal field theories which admit a dual gravitational description in anti–de Sitter space, electrical transport properties, such as conductivity and charge diffusion, are determined by the dynamics of a U(1) gauge field in the bulk and thus obey universality relations at the classical level due to the uniqueness of the Maxwell action. We analyze corrections to these transport parameters due to higher-dimension operators in the bulk action, beyond the leading Maxwell term, of which the most significant involves a coupling to the bulk Weyl tensor. We show that the ensuing corrections to conductivity and the diffusion constant break the universal relation with the U(1) central charge observed at leading order, but are nonetheless subject to interesting bounds associated with causality in the boundary conformal field theory .

• Received 10 December 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.79.066003