561 research outputs found
Shear Modes, Criticality and Extremal Black Holes
We consider a (2+1)-dimensional field theory, assumed to be holographically
dual to the extremal Reissner-Nordstrom AdS(4) black hole background, and
calculate the retarded correlators of charge (vector) current and
energy-momentum (tensor) operators at finite momentum and frequency. We show
that, similar to what was observed previously for the correlators of scalar and
spinor operators, these correlators exhibit emergent scaling behavior at low
frequency. We numerically compute the electromagnetic and gravitational
quasinormal frequencies (in the shear channel) of the extremal
Reissner-Nordstrom AdS(4) black hole corresponding to the spectrum of poles in
the retarded correlators. The picture that emerges is quite simple: there is a
branch cut along the negative imaginary frequency axis, and a series of
isolated poles corresponding to damped excitations. All of these poles are
always in the lower half complex frequency plane, indicating stability. We show
that this analytic structure can be understood as the proper limit of finite
temperature results as T is taken to zero holding the chemical potential fixed.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures, added reference
Aging and Holography
Aging phenomena are examples of `non-equilibrium criticality' and can be
exemplified by systems with Galilean and scaling symmetries but no time
translation invariance. We realize aging holographically using a deformation of
a non-relativistic version of gauge/gravity duality. Correlation functions of
scalar operators are computed using holographic real-time techniques, and agree
with field theory expectations. At least in this setup, general aging phenomena
are reproduced holographically by complexifying the bulk space-time geometry,
even in Lorentzian signature.Comment: 1 pdf figur
Fermions and Type IIB Supergravity On Squashed Sasaki-Einstein Manifolds
We discuss the dimensional reduction of fermionic modes in a recently found
class of consistent truncations of type IIB supergravity compactified on
squashed five-dimensional Sasaki-Einstein manifolds. We derive the lower
dimensional equations of motion and effective action, and comment on the
supersymmetry of the resulting theory, which is consistent with N=4 gauged
supergravity in , coupled to two vector multiplets. We compute fermion
masses by linearizing around two vacua of the theory: one that breaks
N=4 down to N=2 spontaneously, and a second one which preserves no
supersymmetries. The truncations under consideration are noteworthy in that
they retain massive modes which are charged under a U(1) subgroup of the
-symmetry, a feature that makes them interesting for applications to
condensed matter phenomena via gauge/gravity duality. In this light, as an
application of our general results we exhibit the coupling of the fermions to
the type IIB holographic superconductor, and find a consistent further
truncation of the fermion sector that retains a single spin-1/2 mode.Comment: 43 pages, 2 figures, PDFLaTeX; v2: added references, typos corrected,
minor change
Quantum Fluctuations and the Unruh Effect in Strongly-Coupled Conformal Field Theories
Through the AdS/CFT correspondence, we study a uniformly accelerated quark in
the vacuum of strongly-coupled conformal field theories in various dimensions,
and determine the resulting stochastic fluctuations of the quark trajectory.
From the perspective of an inertial observer, these are quantum fluctuations
induced by the gluonic radiation emitted by the accelerated quark. From the
point of view of the quark itself, they originate from the thermal medium
predicted by the Unruh effect. We scrutinize the relation between these two
descriptions in the gravity side of the correspondence, and show in particular
that upon transforming the conformal field theory from Rindler space to the
open Einstein universe, the acceleration horizon disappears from the boundary
theory but is preserved in the bulk. This transformation allows us to directly
connect our calculation of radiation-induced fluctuations in vacuum with the
analysis by de Boer et al. of the Brownian motion of a quark that is on average
static within a thermal medium. Combining this same bulk transformation with
previous results of Emparan, we are also able to compute the stress-energy
tensor of the Unruh thermal medium.Comment: 1+31 pages; v2: reference adde
The Gluonic Field of a Heavy Quark in Conformal Field Theories at Strong Coupling
We determine the gluonic field configuration sourced by a heavy quark
undergoing arbitrary motion in N=4 super-Yang-Mills at strong coupling and
large number of colors. More specifically, we compute the expectation value of
the operator tr[F^2+...] in the presence of such a quark, by means of the
AdS/CFT correspondence. Our results for this observable show that signals
propagate without temporal broadening, just as was found for the expectation
value of the energy density in recent work by Hatta et al. We attempt to shed
some additional light on the origin of this feature, and propose a different
interpretation for its physical significance. As an application of our general
results, we examine when the quark undergoes oscillatory motion,
uniform circular motion, and uniform acceleration. Via the AdS/CFT
correspondence, all of our results are pertinent to any conformal field theory
in 3+1 dimensions with a dual gravity formulation.Comment: 1+38 pages, 16 eps figures; v2: completed affiliation; v3: corrected
typo, version to appear in JHE
Holographic zero sound at finite temperature in the Sakai-Sugimoto model
In this paper, we study the fate of the holographic zero sound mode at finite
temperature and non-zero baryon density in the deconfined phase of the
Sakai-Sugimoto model of holographic QCD. We establish the existence of such a
mode for a wide range of temperatures and investigate the dispersion relation,
quasi-normal modes, and spectral functions of the collective excitations in
four different regimes, namely, the collisionless quantum, collisionless
thermal, and two distinct hydrodynamic regimes. For sufficiently high
temperatures, the zero sound completely disappears, and the low energy physics
is dominated by an emergent diffusive mode. We compare our findings to
Landau-Fermi liquid theory and to other holographic models.Comment: 1+24 pages, 19 figures, PDFTeX, v2: some comments and references
added, v3: some clarifications relating to the different regimes added,
matches version accepted for publication in JHEP, v4: corrected typo in eq.
(3.18
Calculating the energy spectra of magnetic molecules: application of real- and spin-space symmetries
The determination of the energy spectra of small spin systems as for instance
given by magnetic molecules is a demanding numerical problem. In this work we
review numerical approaches to diagonalize the Heisenberg Hamiltonian that
employ symmetries; in particular we focus on the spin-rotational symmetry SU(2)
in combination with point-group symmetries. With these methods one is able to
block-diagonalize the Hamiltonian and thus to treat spin systems of
unprecedented size. In addition it provides a spectroscopic labeling by
irreducible representations that is helpful when interpreting transitions
induced by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
(NMR) or Inelastic Neutron Scattering (INS). It is our aim to provide the
reader with detailed knowledge on how to set up such a diagonalization scheme.Comment: 29 pages, many figure
Early-Time Energy Loss in a Strongly-Coupled SYM Plasma
We carry out an analytic study of the early-time motion of a quark in a
strongly-coupled maximally-supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma, using the AdS/CFT
correspondence. Our approach extracts the first thermal effects as a small
perturbation of the known quark dynamics in vacuum, using a double expansion
that is valid for early times and for (moderately) ultrarelativistic quark
velocities. The quark is found to lose energy at a rate that differs
significantly from the previously derived stationary/late-time result: it
scales like T^4 instead of T^2, and is associated with a friction coefficient
that is not independent of the quark momentum. Under conditions representative
of the quark-gluon plasma as obtained at RHIC, the early energy loss rate is a
few times smaller than its late-time counterpart. Our analysis additionally
leads to thermally-corrected expressions for the intrinsic energy and momentum
of the quark, in which the previously discovered limiting velocity of the quark
is found to appear naturally.Comment: 39 pages, no figures. v2: Minor corrections and clarifications.
References added. Version to be published in JHE
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