THE FLUID–GRAVITY CORRESPONDENCE: THE MEMBRANE AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

We establish an explicit connection between the evolution of generic inhomogeneous black brane solutions in asymptotically AdS space–times and the evolution of relativistic conformal fluids in one lower dimension. Specifically, given any solution to a particular set of fluid-dynamical equations, one can construct an inhomogeneous black brane solution with a regular event horizon. This connection is reminiscent of the membrane paradigm for black holes; in our case the dynamics of the entire space–time is encoded in a fluid living at the boundary. This fluid–gravity correspondence leads to interesting implications for both gravitational physics and fluid dynamics.