We consider zero-temperature transitions from conformal to non-conformal phases in quantum theories. We argue that there are three generic mechanisms for the loss of conformality in any number of dimensions: (i) fixed point goes to zero coupling, (ii) fixed point runs off to infinite coupling, or (iii) an IR fixed point annihilates with a UV fixed point and they both disappear into the complex plane. We give both relativistic and non-relativistic examples of the last case in various dimensions and show that the critical behavior of the mass gap behaves similarly to the correlation length in the finite temperature Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition in two dimensions, xi ~ exp(c/|T-T_c|^{1/2}). We speculate that the chiral phase transition in QCD at large number of fermion flavors belongs to this universality class, and attempt to identify the UV fixed point that annihilates with the Banks-Zaks fixed point at the lower end of the conformal window.
We review the hot QCD transition with varying number of flavors, from two till the onset of the conformal window. We discuss the universality class for $N_f=2$, along the critical line for two massless light flavors, and a third flavor whose mass serves as an interpolator between $N_f = 2$ and $N_f=3$. We identify a possible scaling window for the 3D $O(4)$ universality class transition, and its crossover to a mean field behaviour. We follow the transition from $N_f=3$ to larger $N_f$, when it remains of first order, with an increasing coupling strength; we summarize its known properties, incl…
Four-dimensional gauge theories with matter can have regions in parameter space, often dubbed conformal windows, where they flow in the infrared to non-trivial conformal field theories. It has been conjectured that conformality can be lost because of merging of two nearby fixed points that move into the complex plane, and that a walking dynamics governed by scaling dimensions of operators defined at such complex fixed points can occur. We find controlled, parametrically weakly coupled, and ultraviolet-complete 4D gauge theories that explicitly realize this scenario. We show how the walking dyn…
We study cold and dense nuclear matter by using the gauge/gravity duality. To this end we use the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model and the V-QCD models with an approach where the nuclear matter is taken to be spatially homogeneous. We focus on the ''popcorn'' transitions, which are phase transitions in the nuclear matter phases induced by changes in the layer structure of the configuration on the gravity side. We demonstrate that the equation of state for the homogeneous nuclear matter becomes approximately conformal at high densities, and compare our results to other approaches.
We study holographically the zero and finite temperature behavior of the potential energy and holographic subregion complexity corresponding to a probe meson in a non-conformal model. We observe that in zero and low temperature non-conformality has a decreasing effect on the dimensionless meson potential energy. However, non-conformal corrections increase absolute value of the dimensionless holographic subregion complexity in both zero and finite temperature which means the non-conformal state needs less information to be specified. In other words, considering the effect of non-conformality, t…
We study the IR phase of three dimensional quantum electrodynamics (QED$_3$) coupled to $N_f=2$ flavors of two-component Dirac fermions, which has been controversial for decades. This theory has been proposed to be self-dual with symmetry enhancement $(SU(2)_f\times U(1)_t )/\mathbb{Z}_2\rightarrow O(4)$ at the IR fixed point. We focus on the four-point correlator of monopole operators with unit topological charge of $U(1)_t$. We illustrate the $O(4)\rightarrow SU(2)_f\times U(1)_t $ branching rules based on an $O(4)$ symmetric positive structure in the monopole four-point crossing equations. …
We study the famous example of weakly first order phase transitions in the 1+1D quantum Q-state Potts model at Q>4. We numerically show that these weakly first order transitions have approximately conformal invariance. Specifically, we find entanglement entropy on considerably large system sizes fits perfectly with the universal scaling law of this quantity in the conformal field theories (CFTs). This supports that the weakly first order transitions is proximate to complex fixed points, which are described by recent conjectured complex CFTs. Moreover, the central charge extracted from this fit…
The Sachdev--Ye--Kitaev is a quantum mechanical model of $N$ Majorana fermions which displays a number of appealing features -- solvability in the strong coupling regime, near-conformal invariance and maximal chaos -- which make it a suitable model for black holes in the context of the AdS/CFT holography. In this paper, we show for the colored SYK model and several of its tensor model cousins that the next-to-leading order in the large $N$ expansion preserves the conformal invariance of the $2$-point function in the strong coupling regime, up to the contribution of the pseudo-Goldstone bosons …
Multi-critical point principle (MPP) is one of the interesting theoretical possibilities that can explain the fine-tuning problems of the Universe. It simply claims that "the coupling constants of a theory are tuned to one of the multi-critical points, where some of the extrema of the effective potential are degenerate." One of the simplest examples is the vanishing of the second derivative of the effective potential around a minimum. This corresponds to the so-called classical conformality, because it implies that the renormalized mass $m^2$ vanishes. More generally, the form of the effective…
The electromagnetic response of topological insulators and superconductors is governed by a modified set of Maxwell equations that derive from a topological Chern-Simons (CS) term in the effective Lagrangian with coupling constant $κ$. Here we consider a topological superconductor or, equivalently, an Abelian Higgs model in $2+1$ dimensions with a global $O(2N)$ symmetry in the presence of a CS term, but without a Maxwell term. At large $κ$, the gauge field decouples from the complex scalar field, leading to a quantum critical behavior in the $O(2N)$ universality class. When the Higgs field is…
The Laboratory for Quantum Gravity & Strings, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town（开普敦大学数学与应用数学系量子引力与弦实验室）；Instituto de Física Téorica, UNESP-Universidade Estadual Paulista（圣保罗州立大学理论物理研究所）
In this study, the gauge/string duality is used to investigate the dynamics of a moving heavy quark in a strongly coupled, non-conformal plasma. The drag force in this non-conformal model is smaller than that of $\mathcal{N} = 4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) plasma and decreases as the level of non-conformality is increased. At intermediate temperatures, the world-sheet temperature, which is derived numerically by calculating the world-sheet horizon, deviates from its conformal value, but at high temperatures, it tends to its conformal value.
We study the volume prescription of the holographic subregion complexity in a holographic 5 dimensional model consisting of Einstein gravity coupled to a scalar field with a non-trivial potential. The dual 4 dimensional gauge theory is not conformal and exhibits a RG flow between two different fixed points. In both zero and finite temperature we show that the holographic subregion complexity can be used as a measure of non-conformality of the model. This quantity exhibits also a monotonic behaviour in terms of the size of the entangling region, like the behaviour of the entanglement entropy in…
