Horizon symmetries of exact hydrodynamic actions

Abstract: We demonstrate how horizon symmetries of AdS black holes are realised in the hydrodynamic actions for the dynamics of the dual stress tensor. A recent approach for obtaining such actions involves a choice of horizon boundary conditions, and we show that diffeomorphisms that preserve these give rise to symmetries of the corresponding hydrodynamic action. We obtain explicit hydrodynamic actions for small amplitude perturbations of black holes in JT and AdS$_3$ gravity using this approach and demonstrate explicitly the existence of these symmetries. For a natural choice of boundary conditions, the resulting actions manifestly realise gauge symmetries previously proposed for effective theories of maximal chaos.