Quasinormal modes of massive charged flavor branes

We present an analysis and classification of vector and scalar fluctuations in a D3/D7 brane setup at finite termperature and baryon density. The system is dual to an N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with SU(N_c) gauge group and N_f hypermultiplets in the fundamental representation in the quenched approximation. We improve significantly over previous results on the quasinormal mode spectrum of D7 branes and stress their novel physical interpretation. Amongst our findings is a new purely imaginary scalar mode that becomes tachyonic at sufficiently low temperature and baryon density. We establish the existence of a critical density above which the scalar mode stays in the stable regime for all temperatures. In the vector sector we study the crossover from the hydrodynamic to the quasiparticle regime and find that it moves to shorter wavelengths for lower temperatures. At zero baryon density the quasinormal modes move toward distinct discrete attractor frequencies that depend on the momentum as we increase the temperature. At finite baryon density, however, the trajectories show a turning behavior such that for low temperature the quasinormal mode spectrum approaches the spectrum of the supersymmetric zero temperature normal modes. We interpret this as resolution of the singular quasinormal mode spectrum that appears at the limiting D7 brane embedding at vanishing baryon density.Comment: 56 pages, 40 figure

Validation of the SCID-hu Thy/Liv mouse model with four classes of licensed antiretrovirals.

BackgroundThe SCID-hu Thy/Liv mouse model of HIV-1 infection is a useful platform for the preclinical evaluation of antiviral efficacy in vivo. We performed this study to validate the model with representatives of all four classes of licensed antiretrovirals.Methodology/principal findingsEndpoint analyses for quantification of Thy/Liv implant viral load included ELISA for cell-associated p24, branched DNA assay for HIV-1 RNA, and detection of infected thymocytes by intracellular staining for Gag-p24. Antiviral protection from HIV-1-mediated thymocyte depletion was assessed by multicolor flow cytometric analysis of thymocyte subpopulations based on surface expression of CD3, CD4, and CD8. These mice can be productively infected with molecular clones of HIV-1 (e.g., the X4 clone NL4-3) as well as with primary R5 and R5X4 isolates. To determine whether results in this model are concordant with those found in humans, we performed direct comparisons of two drugs in the same class, each of which has known potency and dosing levels in humans. Here we show that second-generation antiretrovirals were, as expected, more potent than their first-generation predecessors: emtricitabine was more potent than lamivudine, efavirenz was more potent than nevirapine, and atazanavir was more potent than indinavir. After interspecies pharmacodynamic scaling, the dose ranges found to inhibit viral replication in the SCID-hu Thy/Liv mouse were similar to those used in humans. Moreover, HIV-1 replication in these mice was genetically stable; treatment of the mice with lamivudine did not result in the M184V substitution in reverse transcriptase, and the multidrug-resistant NY index case HIV-1 retained its drug-resistance substitutions.ConclusionGiven the fidelity of such comparisons, we conclude that this highly reproducible mouse model is likely to predict clinical antiviral efficacy in humans

Sum Rules from an Extra Dimension

Using the gravity side of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we investigate the analytic properties of thermal retarded Green's functions for scalars, conserved currents, the stress tensor, and massless fermions. We provide some results concerning their large and small frequency behavior and their pole structure. From these results, it is straightforward to prove the validity of various sum rules on the field theory side of the duality. We introduce a novel contraction mapping we use to study the large frequency behavior of the Green's functions.Comment: v2: 23 pages (plus appendix), revised presentation, discussion of branch cuts moved to appendix, and some minor changes; v1: 24 pages (plus appendix

Black holes and black branes in Lifshitz spacetimes

We construct analytic solutions describing black holes and black branes in asymptotically Lifshitz spacetimes with arbitrary dynamical exponent z and for arbitrary number of dimensions. The model considered consists of Einstein gravity with negative cosmological constant, a scalar, and N U(1) gauge fields with dilatonic-like couplings. We study the phase diagrams and thermodynamic instabilities of the solution, and find qualitative differences between the cases with 12.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures; v2 references added, minor comments adde

Conductivity and quasinormal modes in holographic theories

We show that in field theories with a holographic dual the retarded Green's function of a conserved current can be represented as a convergent sum over the quasinormal modes. We find that the zero-frequency conductivity is related to the sum over quasinormal modes and their high-frequency asymptotics via a sum rule. We derive the asymptotics of the quasinormal mode frequencies and their residues using the phase-integral (WKB) approach and provide analytic insight into the existing numerical observations concerning the asymptotic behavior of the spectral densities.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figure

Non-Equilibrium Field Dynamics of an Honest Holographic Superconductor

Most holographic models of superconducting systems neglect the effects of dynamical boundary gauge fields during the process of spontaneous symmetry-breaking. Usually a global symmetry gets broken. This yields a superfluid, which then is gauged "weakly" afterwards. In this work we build (and probe the dynamics of) a holographic model in which a local boundary symmetry is spontaneously broken instead. We compute two-point functions of dynamical non-Abelian gauge fields in the normal and in the broken phase, and find non-trivial gapless modes. Our AdS3 gravity dual realizes a p-wave superconductor in (1+1) dimensions. The ground state of this model also breaks (1+1)-dimensional parity spontaneously, while the Hamiltonian is parity-invariant. We discuss possible implications of our results for a wider class of holographic liquids.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures; v3: string theory derivation of setup added (section 3.1), improved presentation, version accepted by JHEP; v2: paragraph added to discussion, figure added, references added, typos correcte

Non-equilibrium Condensation Process in a Holographic Superconductor

We study the non-equilibrium condensation process in a holographic superconductor. When the temperature T is smaller than a critical temperature T_c, there are two black hole solutions, the Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black hole and a black hole with a scalar hair. In the boundary theory, they can be regarded as the supercooled normal phase and the superconducting phase, respectively. We consider perturbations on supercooled Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black holes and study their non-linear time evolution to know about physical phenomena associated with rapidly-cooled superconductors. We find that, for T<T_c, the initial perturbations grow exponentially and, eventually, spacetimes approach the hairy black holes. We also clarify how the relaxation process from a far-from-equilibrium state proceeds in the boundary theory by observing the time dependence of the superconducting order parameter. Finally, we study the time evolution of event and apparent horizons and discuss their correspondence with the entropy of the boundary theory. Our result gives a first step toward the holographic understanding of the non-equilibrium process in superconductors.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Field theories with anisotropic scaling in 2D, solitons and the microscopic entropy of asymptotically Lifshitz black holes

Field theories with anisotropic scaling in 1+1 dimensions are considered. It is shown that the isomorphism between Lifshitz algebras with dynamical exponents z and 1/z naturally leads to a duality between low and high temperature regimes. Assuming the existence of gap in the spectrum, this duality allows to obtain a precise formula for the asymptotic growth of the number of states with a fixed energy which depends on z and the energy of the ground state, and reduces to the Cardy formula for z=1. The holographic realization of the duality can be naturally inferred from the fact that Euclidean Lifshitz spaces in three dimensions with dynamical exponents and characteristic lengths given by z, l, and 1/z, l/z, respectively, are diffeomorphic. The semiclassical entropy of black holes with Lifshitz asymptotics can then be recovered from the generalization of Cardy formula, where the ground state corresponds to a soliton. An explicit example is provided by the existence of a purely gravitational soliton solution for BHT massive gravity, which precisely has the required energy that reproduces the entropy of the analytic asymptotically Lifshitz black hole with z=3. Remarkably, neither the asymptotic symmetries nor central charges were explicitly used in order to obtain these results.Comment: 17 pages, no figures, references corrected and update

Analytical study on holographic superconductors in external magnetic field

We investigate the holographic superconductors immersed in an external magnetic field by using the analytical approach. We obtain the spatially dependent condensate solutions in the presence of the magnetism and find analytically that the upper critical magnetic field satisfies the relation given in the Ginzburg-Landau theory. We observe analytically the reminiscent of the Meissner effect where the magnetic field expels the condensate. Extending to the D-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet AdS black holes, we examine the influence given by the Gauss-Bonnet coupling on the condensation. Different from the positive coupling, we find that the negative Gauss-Bonnet coupling enhances the condensation when the external magnetism is not strong enough.Comment: revised version, to appear in JHE