Bulk viscosity of N = 2 ∗ plasma

We use gauge theory/string theory correspondence to study the bulk viscosity of strongly coupled, mass deformed SU(Nc) N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma, also known as N = 2 gauge theory. For a wide range of masses we confirm the bulk viscosity bound proposed in [1]. For a certain choice of masses, the theory undergoes a phase transition with divergent specific heat cV ∼ |1 − Tc/T |−1/2. We show that, although bulk viscosity rapidly grows as T → Tc, it remains finite in the vicinity of the critical point.