Gravity Dual of a Quantum Hall Plateau Transition

We show how to model the transition between distinct quantum Hall plateaus in terms of D-branes in string theory. A low energy theory of 2+1 dimensional fermions is obtained by considering the D3-D7 system, and the plateau transition corresponds to moving the branes through one another. We study the transition at strong coupling using gauge/gravity duality and the probe approximation. Strong coupling leads to a novel kind of plateau transition: at low temperatures the transition remains discontinuous due to the effects of dynamical symmetry breaking and mass generation, and at high temperatures is only partially smoothed out.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures, harvmac; v2, references and minor comments added, version to be submitted to JHEP; v3, corrections to section

On the Geroch-Traschen class of metrics

We compare two approaches to semi-Riemannian metrics of low regularity. The maximally 'reasonable' distributional setting of Geroch and Traschen is shown to be consistently contained in the more general setting of nonlinear distributional geometry in the sense of Colombea

A Holographic Quantum Critical Point at Finite Magnetic Field and Finite Density

We analyze the phase diagram of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with fundamental matter in the presence of a background magnetic field and nonzero baryon number. We identify an isolated quantum critical point separating two differently ordered finite density phases. The ingredients that give rise to this transition are generic in a holographic setup, leading us to conjecture that such critical points should be rather common. In this case, the quantum phase transition is second order with mean-field exponents. We characterize the neighborhood of the critical point at small temperatures and identify some signatures of a new phase dominated by the critical point. We also identify the line of transitions between the finite density and zero density phases. The line is completely determined by the mass of the lightest charged quasiparticle at zero density. Finally, we measure the magnetic susceptibility and find hints of fermion condensation at large magnetic field.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure

On the Burer-Monteiro method for general semidefinite programs

Consider a semidefinite program (SDP) involving an $n\times n$ positive semidefinite matrix $X$. The Burer-Monteiro method uses the substitution $X=Y Y^T$ to obtain a nonconvex optimization problem in terms of an $n\times p$ matrix $Y$. Boumal et al. showed that this nonconvex method provably solves equality-constrained SDPs with a generic cost matrix when $p \gtrsim \sqrt{2m}$, where $m$ is the number of constraints. In this note we extend their result to arbitrary SDPs, possibly involving inequalities or multiple semidefinite constraints. We derive similar guarantees for a fixed cost matrix and generic constraints. We illustrate applications to matrix sensing and integer quadratic minimization.Comment: 10 page