6 research outputs found
Luttinger's theorem, superfluid vortices, and holography
Strongly coupled field theories with gravity duals can be placed at finite
density in two ways: electric field flux emanating from behind a horizon, or
bulk charged fields outside of the horizon that explicitly source the density.
We discuss field-theoretical observables that are sensitive to this
distinction. If the charged fields are fermionic, we discuss a modified
Luttinger's theorem that holds for holographic systems, in which the sum of
boundary theory Fermi surfaces counts only the charge outside of the horizon.
If the charged fields are bosonic, we show that the the resulting superfluid
phase may be characterized by the coefficient of the transverse Magnus force on
a moving superfluid vortex, which again is sensitive only to the charge outside
of the horizon. For holographic systems these observables provide a
field-theoretical way to distinguish how much charge is held by a dual horizon,
but they may be useful in more general contexts as measures of deconfined (i.e.
"fractionalized") charge degrees of freedom.Comment: 21 pages; version 2: minor changes, version to be published in CQG;
version 3: minor change
Large-density field theory, viscosity, and "" singularities from string duals
We analyze systems where an effective large-N expansion arises naturally in
gauge theories without a large number of colors: a sufficiently large charge
density alone can produce a perturbative string ('tHooft) expansion. One
example is simply the well-known NS5/F1 system dual to , here viewed as a 5+1 dimensional theory at finite density. This model is
completely stable, and we find that the existing string-theoretic solution of
this model yields two interesting results. First, it indicates that the shear
viscosity is not corrected by effects in this system. For flow
perpendicular to the F1 strings the viscosity to entropy ratio take the usual
value , but for flow parallel to the F1's it vanishes as at low
temperature. Secondly, it encodes singularities in correlation functions coming
from low-frequency modes at a finite value of the momentum along the
directions. This may provide a strong coupling analogue of finite density
condensed matter systems for which fermionic constituents of larger operators
contribute so-called "" singularities. In the NS5/F1 example, stretched
strings on the gravity side play the role of these composite operators. We
explore the analogue for our system of the Luttinger relation between charge
density and the volume bounded by these singular surfaces. This model provides
a clean example where the string-theoretic UV completion of the gravity dual to
a finite density field theory plays a significant and calculable role.Comment: 28 pages. v2: added reference
Moduli Spaces of Cold Holographic Matter
We use holography to study (3+1)-dimensional N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills
theory with gauge group SU(Nc), in the large-Nc and large-coupling limits,
coupled to a single massless (n+1)-dimensional hypermultiplet in the
fundamental representation of SU(Nc), with n=3,2,1. In particular, we study
zero-temperature states with a nonzero baryon number charge density, which we
call holographic matter. We demonstrate that a moduli space of such states
exists in these theories, specifically a Higgs branch parameterized by the
expectation values of scalar operators bilinear in the hypermultiplet scalars.
At a generic point on the Higgs branch, the R-symmetry and gauge group are
spontaneously broken to subgroups. Our holographic calculation consists of
introducing a single probe Dp-brane into AdS5 times S^5, with p=2n+1=7,5,3,
introducing an electric flux of the Dp-brane worldvolume U(1) gauge field, and
then obtaining explicit solutions for the worldvolume fields dual to the scalar
operators that parameterize the Higgs branch. In all three cases, we can
express these solutions as non-singular self-dual U(1) instantons in a
four-dimensional space with a metric determined by the electric flux. We
speculate on the possibility that the existence of Higgs branches may point the
way to a counting of the microstates producing a nonzero entropy in holographic
matter. Additionally, we speculate on the possible classification of
zero-temperature, nonzero-density states described holographically by probe
D-branes with worldvolume electric flux.Comment: 56 pages, 8 PDF images, 4 figure