Topological sigma models & dissipative hydrodynamics

We outline a universal schwinger-keldysh effective theory which describes macroscopic thermal fluctuations of a relativistic field theory. the basic ingredients of our construction are three: a doubling of degrees of freedom, an emergent abelian symmetry associated with entropy, and a topological (brst) supersymmetry imposing fluctuationdissipation theorem. we illustrate these ideas for a non-linear viscous fluid, and demonstrate that the resulting effective action obeys a generalized fluctuation-dissipation theorem, which guarantees a local form of the second law.