Transverse Goldstone mode in holographic fluids with broken translations

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the low energy shear modes in fluid systems with spontaneously broken translations by a specific holographic model. In absence of momentum relaxation, we find that there exist two decoupled gapless modes in the transverse channel, one of which is purely diffusive and the other corresponds to vortex like excitations. The diffusive mode is associated with the conservation of momentum and the vortex mode can be viewed as the Goldstone mode of the spontaneous symmetry breaking. Switching on an external source which breaks the translations explicitly but weakly, the would-be gapless modes both get relaxed and acquire a tiny mass gap. Finally, in the strong momentum relaxation regime, we find a (pseudo-)diffusive-to-sound crossover that is set by a momentum gap.