23 research outputs found
Holographic Aspects of Fermi Liquids in a Background Magnetic Field
We study the effects of an external magnetic field on the properties of the
quasiparticle spectrum of the class of 2+1 dimensional strongly coupled
theories holographically dual to charged AdS black holes at zero
temperature. We uncover several interesting features. At certain values of the
magnetic field, there are multiple quasiparticle peaks representing a novel
level structure of the associated Fermi surfaces. Furthermore, increasing
magnetic field deforms the dispersion characteristics of the quasiparticle
peaks from non-Landau toward Landau behaviour. At a certain value of the
magnetic field, just at the onset of Landau-like behaviour of the Fermi liquid,
the quasiparticles and Fermi surface disappear.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures. Revised some of the terminology: changed
non-separable solutions to infinite-sum solution
Dynamics of Fundamental Matter in N=2* Yang-Mills Theory
We study the dynamics of quenched fundamental matter in
supersymmetric large SU(N) Yang-Mills theory at zero temperature. Our tools
for this study are probe D7-branes in the holographically dual
Pilch-Warner gravitational background. Previous work using
D3-brane probes of this geometry has shown that it captures the physics of a
special slice of the Coulomb branch moduli space of the gauge theory, where the
constituent D3-branes form a dense one dimensional locus known as the
enhancon, located deep in the infrared. Our present work shows how this physics
is supplemented by the physics of dynamical flavours, revealed by the D7-branes
embeddings we find. The Pilch-Warner background introduces new divergences into
the D7-branes free energy, which we are able to remove with a single
counterterm. We find a family of D7-brane embeddings in the geometry and
discuss their properties. We study the physics of the quark condensate,
constituent quark mass, and part of the meson spectrum. Notably, there is a
special zero mass embedding that ends on the enhancon, which shows that while
the geometry acts repulsively on the D7-branes, it does not do so in a way that
produces spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures. Corrected typos, added comment about
counterterm. To appear in JHE
Holographic Studies of Entanglement Entropy in Superconductors
We present the results of our studies of the entanglement entropy of a
superconducting system described holographically as a fully back-reacted
gravity system, with a stable ground state. We use the holographic prescription
for the entanglement entropy. We uncover the behavior of the entropy across the
superconducting phase transition, showing the reorganization of the degrees of
freedom of the system. We exhibit the behaviour of the entanglement entropy
from the superconducting transition all the way down to the ground state at
T=0. In some cases, we also observe a novel transition in the entanglement
entropy at intermediate temperatures, resulting from the detection of an
additional length scale.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures. v2:Clarified some remarks concerning stability.
v3: Updated to the version that appears in JHE
p-Wave holographic superconductors with Weyl corrections
We study the (3+1) dimensional p-wave holographic superconductors with Weyl
corrections both numerically and analytically. We describe numerically the
behavior of critical temperature with respect to charge density
in a limited range of Weyl coupling parameter and we find in general
the condensation becomes harder with the increase of parameter . In
strong coupling limit of Yang-Mills theory, we show that the minimum value of
obtained from analytical approach is in good agreement with the
numerical results, and finally show how we got remarkably a similar result in
the critical exponent 1/2 of the chemical potential and the order
parameter with the numerical curves of superconductors.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. One refrence added, presentations
improve
Landau Levels, Magnetic Fields and Holographic Fermi Liquids
We further consider a probe fermion in a dyonic black hole background in
anti-de Sitter spacetime, at zero temperature, comparing and contrasting two
distinct classes of solution that have previously appeared in the literature.
Each class has members labeled by an integer n, corresponding to the n-th
Landau level for the fermion. Our interest is the study of the spectral
function of the fermion, interpreting poles in it as indicative of
quasiparticles associated with the edge of a Fermi surface in the
holographically dual strongly coupled theory in a background magnetic field H
at finite chemical potential. Using both analytical and numerical methods, we
explicitly show how one class of solutions naturally leads to an infinite
family of quasiparticle peaks, signaling the presence of a Fermi surface for
each level n. We present some of the properties of these peaks, which fall into
a well behaved pattern at large n, extracting the scaling of Fermi energy with
n and H, as well as the dispersion of the quasiparticles.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures. Changed some of the terminology: non-separable
-> infinite-sum. Clarified the relationship between our ansatz and the
separable ansat
Evolution of Holographic Entanglement Entropy after Thermal and Electromagnetic Quenches
We study the evolution and scaling of the entanglement entropy after two
types of quenches for a 2+1 field theory, using holographic techniques. We
study a thermal quench, dual to the addition of a shell of uncharged matter to
four dimensional Anti-de Sitter (AdS_4) spacetime, and study the subsequent
formation of a Schwarzschild black hole. We also study an electromagnetic
quench, dual to the addition of a shell of charged sources to AdS_4, following
the subsequent formation of an extremal dyonic black hole. In these backgrounds
we consider the entanglement entropy of two types of geometries, the infinite
strip and the round disc, and find distinct behavior for each. Some of our
findings naturally supply results analogous to observations made in the
literature for lower dimensions, but we also uncover several new phenomena,
such as (in some cases) a discontinuity in the time derivative of the
entanglement entropy as it nears saturation, and for the electromagnetic
quench, a logarithmic growth in the entanglement entropy with time for both the
disc and strip, before settling to saturation.Comment: 30 pages, 19 figures. Corrected typos and added some discussion. To
appear in New J. Phy
Surprising Connections Between General Relativity and Condensed Matter
This brief review is intended to introduce gravitational physicists to recent
developments in which general relativity is being used to describe certain
aspects of condensed matter systems, e.g., superconductivity.Comment: 14 pages; based on talk given at GR1
Chiral Symmetry Breaking and External Fields in the Kuperstein-Sonnenschein Model
A novel holographic model of chiral symmetry breaking has been proposed by
Kuperstein and Sonnenschein by embedding non-supersymmetric probe D7 and
anti-D7 branes in the Klebanov-Witten background. We study the dynamics of the
probe flavours in this model in the presence of finite temperature and a
constant electromagnetic field. In keeping with the weakly coupled field theory
intuition, we find the magnetic field promotes spontaneous breaking of chiral
symmetry whereas the electric field restores it. The former effect is
universally known as the "magnetic catalysis" in chiral symmetry breaking. In
the presence of an electric field such a condensation is inhibited and a
current flows. Thus we are faced with a steady-state situation rather than a
system in equilibrium. We conjecture a definition of thermodynamic free energy
for this steady-state phase and using this proposal we study the detailed phase
structure when both electric and magnetic fields are present in two
representative configurations: mutually perpendicular and parallel.Comment: 50 pages, multiple figures, minor typo fixed, references adde
Flavoured Large N Gauge Theory in an External Magnetic Field
We consider a D7-brane probe of AdS in the presence of pure
gauge -field. In the dual gauge theory, the -field couples to the
fundamental matter introduced by the D7-brane and acts as an external magnetic
field. The -field supports a 6-form Ramond-Ramond potential on the D7-branes
world volume that breaks the supersymmetry and enables the dual gauge theory to
develop a non-zero fermionic condensate. We explore the dependence of the
fermionic condensate on the bare quark mass and show that at zero bare
quark mass a chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken. A study of the meson
spectrum reveals a coupling between the vector and scalar modes, and in the
limit of weak magnetic field we observe Zeeman splitting of the states. We also
observe the characteristic dependence of the ground state
corresponding to the Goldstone boson of spontaneously broken chiral symmetry.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, references added, few typos correcte