Towards a general fluid/gravity correspondence

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We set up the construction of generic (d+2)-dimensional metrics corresponding to (d+1)-dimensional fluids, representing holographically the hydrodynamic regimes of the putative dual theories. We give general seed equilibrium metrics appropriate to generic bulk stress energy tensors and discuss the implications of conformal rescalings of the hypersurface on which the fluid is defined. We then show how to obtain the corresponding hydrodynamic metrics using a relativistic gradient expansion and discuss the integrability conditions of the resulting equations. The stress energy tensors of the resulting fluids, both at and away from equilibrium, satisfy a quadratic constraint. We interpret this constraint in terms of two possible equations of state for the fluid and show that only one of the two equations is physical. We illustrate our discussions with the example of the cutoff AdS fluid, for which we find the precise interpretation in terms of deformations of the UV conformal field theory. Finally we discuss the relation between the modern fluid/gravity approach taken in this paper and the earlier membrane paradigm.