19 research outputs found

    Mass Generation and Symmetry Breaking in Chern-Simons Supergravity

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    We argue that the quartic fermionic potential of five-dimensional Chern-Simons supergravity induces spontaneous symmetry breaking, in a phenomenon bearing a close connection with the Nambu and Jona-Lasinio model.Comment: 5 pages, 1 eps figure. Corrected and added reference

    Condensed matter and AdS/CFT

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    I review two classes of strong coupling problems in condensed matter physics, and describe insights gained by application of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The first class concerns non-zero temperature dynamics and transport in the vicinity of quantum critical points described by relativistic field theories. I describe how relativistic structures arise in models of physical interest, present results for their quantum critical crossover functions and magneto-thermoelectric hydrodynamics. The second class concerns symmetry breaking transitions of two-dimensional systems in the presence of gapless electronic excitations at isolated points or along lines (i.e. Fermi surfaces) in the Brillouin zone. I describe the scaling structure of a recent theory of the Ising-nematic transition in metals, and discuss its possible connection to theories of Fermi surfaces obtained from simple AdS duals.Comment: 39 pages, 12 figures; Lectures at the 5th Aegean summer school, "From gravity to thermal gauge theories: the AdS/CFT correspondence", and the De Sitter Lecture Series in Theoretical Physics 2009, University of Groninge
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