Conductivities for Hyperscaling Violating Geometries

We show that many results about holographic conductivities in geometries with hyperscaling violating scaling can be reproduced from simple scaling laws in the dual field theory. We show that the electro-magnetic response of probe branes in these systems require at least one additional scaling parameter Phi beyond the usual dynamical exponent z and hyperscaling violating exponent theta, as also pointed out in earlier work. We show that the scaling exponents can be chosen in such a way that the temperature dependence of DC conductivity and Hall angle in strange metals can be reproduced.Comment: 16 pages; v2: references added; v3: comparison to Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton system added; version to appear in JHE

Multiband models for field theories with anomalous current dimension

We give simple examples of weakly coupled or free quantum mechanical systems that exhibit scale invariance with an anomalous dimension for a conserved current. In these models scaling as an exact symmetry only emerges in a large N limit, but it remains as an approximate symmetry even at finite N.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure; v2: references added; v3: missing factor of z added in (5.4) and (5.5

Adding D7-branes to the Polchinski-Strassler gravity background

We motivate and summarize our analysis of hep-th/0610276 in which we consider D7-brane probe embeddings in the Polchinski-Strassler background with N=2 supersymmetry. The corresponding dual gauge theory is given by the N=2* theory with fundamental matter.Comment: Based on a talk given by C.S. at the RTN Workshop and Midterm meeting 2006 in Napoli, LaTeX, 7 pages, 1 table, 1 figur

Boundary Holographic Witten Diagrams

In this paper we discuss geodesic Witten diagrams in generic holographic conformal field theories with boundary or defect. Boundary CFTs allow two different decompositions of two-point functions into conformal blocks: boundary channel and ambient channel. Building on earlier work, we derive a holographic dual of the boundary channel decomposition in terms of bulk-to-bulk propagators on lower dimensional AdS slices. In the situation in which we can treat the boundary or defect as a perturbation around pure AdS spacetime, we obtain the leading corrections to the two-point function both in boundary and ambient channel in terms of geodesic Witten diagrams which exactly reproduce the decomposition into corresponding conformal blocks on the field theory side.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures, v2:included hypergeometric identities for generic no-brane case, references added, v3:published versio

Mesons and Higgs branch in defect theories

We consider the defect theory obtained by intersecting D3- and D5-branes along two common spatial directions. We work in the approximation in which the D5-brane is a probe in the AdS_5xS^5 background. By adding worldvolume flux to the D5-brane and choosing an appropriate embedding of the probe in AdS_5xS^5, one gets a supersymmetric configuration in which some of the D3-branes recombine with the D5-brane. We check this fact by showing that the D5-brane can be regarded as a system of polarized D3-branes. On the field theory side this corresponds to the Higgs branch of the defect theory, where some of the fundamental hypermultiplet fields living on the intersection acquire a vacuum expectation value. We study the spectrum of mesonic bound states of the defect theory in this Higgs branch and show that it is continuous and gapless.Comment: 15 pages, LaTe

Hadron Masses and Screening from AdS Wilson Loops

We show that in strongly coupled N=4 SYM the binding energy of a heavy and a light quark is independent of the strength of the coupling constant. As a consequence we are able to show that in the presence of light quarks the analog of the QCD string can snap and color charges are screened. The resulting neutral mesons interact with each other only via pion exchange and we estimate the massesComment: 4 pages, revte