Propagation speeds of relativistic conformal fluids from a generalized relaxation time approximation

Abstract: We compute the propagation speeds for a conformal real relativistic fluid. We begin from a kinetic equation in the relaxation time approximation, where the relaxation time is an arbitrary function of the particle energy in the Landau frame. We propose a parameterization of the one particle distribution function designed to contain a second order Chapman-Enskog solution as a particular case. We derive the hydrodynamic equations applying the moments method to this parameterized one particle distribution function, and solve for the propagation speeds of linearized scalar, vector and tensor perturbations. For relaxation times of the form $\tau=\tau_0(-\beta_{\mu}p^{\mu})^{-a}$, with $-\infty< a<2$, where $\beta_{\mu}=u_{\mu}/T$ is the temperature vector in the Landau frame, we show that the Anderson-Witting prescription $a=1$ yields the fastest speeds.