Chern-Simons diffusion rate in anisotropic plasma at strong coupling

In this work we probe the anisotropy of gauge theory plasma at strong coupling regime within the framework of holographic AdS/CFT correspondence. To be specific, we compute the Chern-Simons diffusion rate in an anisotropic, strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills plasma by working with its supergravity dual in an anisotropic spacetime. The Chern-Simons diffusion rate is an important observable in CP-odd phenomena, which may happen in the quark-gluon plasma. We worked out a generically analytic formula for the Chern-Simons diffusion rate using both linear hydrodynamic expansion and holographic renormalization group flow equation methods. In the high temperature phase (compared to the spatial anisotropy), we found that the anisotropy will decrease the Chern-Simons diffusion rate. We also used the generic formula to extract the stringy/higher order gravity corrections to the Chern-Simons diffusion rate.