Steady-state Physics, Effective Temperature Dynamics in Holography

Understand

Using the gauge-gravity duality, we argue that for a certain class of out-of-equilibrium steady-state systems in contact with a thermal background at a given temperature, the macroscopic physics can be captured by an effective thermodynamic description.

• The steady-state is obtained by applying a constant electric field that results in a stationary current flow.
• Within holography, we consider generic probe systems where an open string equivalence principle and an open string metric govern the effective thermodynamics.
• This description comes equipped with an effective temperature, which is larger than the background temperature, and a corresponding effective entropy.