472 research outputs found
Dissecting holographic conductivities
The DC thermoelectric conductivities of holographic systems in which
translational symmetry is broken can be efficiently computed in terms of the
near-horizon data of the dual black hole. By calculating the frequency
dependent conductivities to the first subleading order in the momentum
relaxation rate, we give a physical explanation for these conductivities in the
simplest such example, in the limit of slow momentum relaxation. Specifically,
we decompose each conductivity into the sum of a coherent contribution due to
momentum relaxation and an incoherent contribution, due to intrinsic current
relaxation. This decomposition is different from those previously proposed, and
is consistent with the known hydrodynamic properties in the translationally
invariant limit. This is the first step towards constructing a consistent
theory of charged hydrodynamics with slow momentum relaxation.Comment: v2: minor edits, matches published version. v1: 26 pages, 1 figur
Momentum dissipation and effective theories of coherent and incoherent transport
We study heat transport in two systems without momentum conservation: a
hydrodynamic system, and a holographic system with spatially dependent,
massless scalar fields. When momentum dissipates slowly, there is a
well-defined, coherent collective excitation in the AC heat conductivity, and a
crossover between sound-like and diffusive transport at small and large
distance scales. When momentum dissipates quickly, there is no such excitation
in the incoherent AC heat conductivity, and diffusion dominates at all distance
scales. For a critical value of the momentum dissipation rate, we compute exact
expressions for the Green's functions of our holographic system due to an
emergent gravitational self-duality, similar to electric/magnetic duality, and
SL(2,R) symmetries. We extend the coherent/incoherent classification to
examples of charge transport in other holographic systems: probe brane theories
and neutral theories with non-Maxwell actions.Comment: v1: 41 pages + appendices, 7 figures. v2: references and
clarifications added. v3: reference adde
Incoherent transport in clean quantum critical metals
In a clean quantum critical metal, and in the absence of umklapp, most d.c.
conductivities are formally infinite due to momentum conservation. However,
there is a particular combination of the charge and heat currents which has a
finite, universal conductivity. In this paper, we describe the physics of this
conductivity in quantum critical metals obtained by charge doping a
strongly interacting conformal field theory. We show that it satisfies an
Einstein relation and controls the diffusivity of a conserved charge in the
metal. We compute in a class of theories with holographic
gravitational duals. Finally, we show how the temperature scaling of
depends on certain critical exponents characterizing the quantum critical
metal. The holographic results are found to be reproduced by the scaling
analysis, with the charge density operator becoming marginal in the emergent
low energy quantum critical theory.Comment: v1: 1 + 16 pages + reference
Hydrodynamic flows of non-Fermi liquids: magnetotransport and bilayer drag
We consider a hydrodynamic description of transport for generic two
dimensional electron systems that lack Galilean invariance and do not fall into
the category of Fermi liquids. We study magnetoresistance and show that it is
governed only by the electronic viscosity provided that the wavelength of the
underlying disorder potential is large compared to the microscopic
equilibration length. We also derive the Coulomb drag transresistance for
double-layer non-Fermi liquid systems in the hydrodynamic regime. As an
example, we consider frictional drag between two quantum Hall states with
half-filled lowest Landau levels, each described by a Fermi surface of
composite fermions coupled to a gauge field. We contrast our results to
prior calculations of drag of Chern-Simons composite particles and place our
findings in the context of available experimental data.Comment: 4 pages + references + supplementary information, 1 figur
Holographic duality and the resistivity of strange metals
We present a strange metal, described by a holographic duality, which
reproduces the famous linear resistivity of the normal state of the copper
oxides, in addition to the linear specific heat. This holographic metal reveals
a simple and general mechanism for producing such a resistivity, which requires
only quenched disorder and a strongly interacting, locally quantum critical
state. The key is the minimal viscosity of the latter: unlike in a
Fermi-liquid, the viscosity is very small and therefore is important for the
electrical transport. This mechanism produces a resistivity proportional to the
electronic entropy.Comment: v2: 20 pages; changed order of presentation and added background
information; emphasised local criticalit
AdS/CFT and Landau Fermi liquids
We study the field theory dual to a charged gravitational background in which
the low temperature entropy scales linearly with the temperature. We exhibit
the existence of a sound mode which is described by hydrodynamics, even at
energies much larger than the temperature, and explain how this, and other
properties of the field theory, are consistent with those of a
(3+1)-dimensional Landau Fermi liquid, finely tuned to the Pomeranchuk critical
point. We also discuss how one could engineer a higher-derivative gravitational
Lagrangian which reproduces the correct low temperature behavior of shear
viscosity in a generic Landau Fermi liquid.Comment: harvmac, 35 pages, 2 figures. v2: minor changes and references adde
Thermal diffusivity and chaos in metals without quasiparticles
We study the thermal diffusivity in models of metals without
quasiparticle excitations (`strange metals'). The many-body quantum chaos and
transport properties of such metals can be efficiently described by a
holographic representation in a gravitational theory in an emergent curved
spacetime with an additional spatial dimension. We find that at generic
infra-red fixed points is always related to parameters characterizing
many-body quantum chaos: the butterfly velocity , and Lyapunov time
through . The relationship holds independently
of the charge density, periodic potential strength or magnetic field at the
fixed point. The generality of this result follows from the observation that
the thermal conductivity of strange metals depends only on the metric near the
horizon of a black hole in the emergent spacetime, and is otherwise insensitive
to the profile of any matter fields.Comment: 27 page
Hydrodynamic theory of quantum fluctuating superconductivity
A hydrodynamic theory of transport in quantum mechanically phase-disordered
superconductors is possible when supercurrent relaxation can be treated as a
slow process. We obtain general results for the frequency-dependent
conductivity of such a regime. With time-reversal invariance, the conductivity
is characterized by a Drude-like peak, with width given by the supercurrent
relaxation rate. Using the memory matrix formalism, we obtain a formula for
this width (and hence also the dc resistivity) when the supercurrent is relaxed
by short range Coulomb interactions. This leads to a new -- effective field
theoretic and fully quantum -- derivation of a classic result on flux flow
resistance. With strong breaking of time-reversal invariance, the optical
conductivity exhibits what we call a `hydrodynamic supercyclotron' resonance.
We obtain the frequency and decay rate of this resonance for the case of
supercurrent relaxation due to an emergent Chern-Simons gauge field. The
supercurrent decay rate in this `topologically ordered superfluid vortex
liquid' is determined by the conductivities of the normal component of the
liquid. Our work gives a controlled framework for low temperature metallic
phases arising from phase-disordered superconductivity.Comment: 1 + 44 pages. 2 figures. v2 discussion improved in places. v3 sign
errors fixed in section
Hydrodynamics of cold holographic matter
We show that at any temperature, the low-energy (with respect to the chemical
potential) collective excitations of the transverse components of the
energy-momentum tensor and the global U(1) current in the field theory dual to
the planar RN-AdS4 black hole are simply those of hydrodynamics. That is,
hydrodynamics is applicable even at energy scales much greater than the
temperature. It is applicable even at zero temperature. Specifically, we find
that there is always a diffusion mode with diffusion constant proportional to
the ratio of entropy density to energy density. At low temperatures, the
leading order momentum and temperature dependences of the dispersion relation
of this mode are controlled by the dimension of an operator in the thermal CFT1
dual to the near-horizon Schwarzschild-AdS2 geometry.Comment: 36 pages, 4 figures, v2: published version, minor clarifications and
references adde
Holographic zero sound at finite temperature
We use gauge-gravity duality to study the temperature dependence of the zero
sound mode and the fundamental matter diffusion mode in the strongly coupled
{\cal N}=4 SU(N_c) supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with N_f {\cal N}=2
hypermultiplets in the N_c>>1, N_c>>N_f limit, which is holographically
realized via the D3/D7 brane system. In the high density limit \mu>>T, three
regimes can be identified in the behavior of these modes, analogous to the
collisionless quantum, collisionless thermal and hydrodynamic regimes of a
Landau Fermi-liquid. The transitions between the three regimes are
characterized by the parameters T/\mu and (T/\mu)^2 respectively, and in each
of these regimes the modes have a distinctively different temperature and
momentum dependence. The collisionless-hydrodynamic transition occurs when the
zero sound poles of the density-density correlator in the complex frequency
plane collide on the imaginary axis to produce a hydrodynamic diffusion pole.
We observe that the properties characteristic of a Landau Fermi-liquid zero
sound mode are present in the D3/D7 system despite the atypical T^6/\mu^3
temperature scaling of the specific heat and an apparent lack of a directly
identifiable Fermi surface.Comment: 35 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, 3 animation
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