We study a 2+1 dimensional model of superconductors using a 3+1 dimensional gravitational dual theory of a black hole coupled to a scalar field, with negative cosmological constant. In the presence of finite temperature T and a background magnetic field B, we use numerical and analytic techniques to solve the full Maxwell-scalar equations of motion in the background geometry, finding non-trivial localized solutions that correspond to condensate droplets, and to vortices. The properties of these solutions enable us to deduce several key features of the (B,T) phase diagram.
A d-wave holographic superconductor is studied under a constant magnetic field by perturbation method, we obtain both droplet and triangular vortex lattice solution. The results are the same as the s-wave holographic superconductor. The non-Abelian holographic superconductor with $p+ip$-wave background is also studied under magnetic field, unlike the d-wave and s-wave models, we find that the non-Abelian model has only droplet solution.
The purpose of these lecture notes is to give a quick and introductory overview of holographic superconductors. Besides the actual description of the standard holographic superconductor, attention is paid to the motivations and the relation with the previous, non-holographic context.
We construct a holographic two-band superconductor model with interband Josephson coupling. We investigate the effects the Josephson coupling has on the superconducting condensates and the critical temperature for their formation numerically, as well as analytically where possible. We calculate the AC conductivity and find it qualitatively similar to the single band superconductor. We investigate the nodal structure of our holographic two-band superconductor from the low temperature behavior of the thermal conductivity and find it nodeless.
Superconductors in a cylindrical geometry respond periodically to a cylinder-threading magnetic flux, with the period changing from hc/2e to hc/e depending on whether the Aharonov-Bohm effects are suppressed or not. We show that Holographic Superconductors present a similar phenomenon, and that the different periodicities follow from classical no-hair theorems. We also give the Ginzburg-Landau description of the period-doubling phenomenon.
We construct the holographic model of an $S^\pm$ multiband superconductor. This system is a candidate to explain the anomalous features of the iron-based superconductors (e.g. LaFeAsO, BFe2As2, and other pnictides and arsenides). We study the framework, which allows formation of the sign-interchanging order parameter. We also calculate the electric AC conductivity and study its features, related to the interband interaction.
We investigate the single normal impurity effect in a superconductor by the holographic method. When the size of impurity is much smaller than the host superconductor, we can reproduce the Anderson theorem, which states that a conventional s-wave superconductor is robust to a normal (non-magnetic) impurity with small impurity strength. However, by increasing the size of the impurity in a fixed-size host superconductor, we find a decreasing critical temperature $T_c$ of the host superconductor, which agrees with the results in condensed matter literatures. More importantly, the phase transition…
We analytically sutdy the effect of external magnetic field in a Holographic superconductor by using Sturm-Liouville method. We estimate the coefficient of proportionality at critical temperature and find its denpendence on external magnetic field. By exploring phase diagrams of critical temperature and magnetic field for various condensates, we conclude that a Meissner-like effect is a general feature in Holographic superconductors. We also study the quantum phase transition at zero temperature and find that critical charge density increases linearly with the condensate dimension.
Under holographic prescription for Schwinger-Keldysh closed time contour for non-equilibrium system, we consider fluctuation effect of the order parameter in a holographic superconductor model. Near the critical point, we derive the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau effective action governing dynamics of the fluctuating order parameter. In a semi-analytical approach, the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau action is computed up to quartic order of the fluctuating order parameter, and first order in time derivative.
We report the observation of the spatially modulated static mode in the spectrum of fluctuations around the condensed phase of the holographic d-wave superconductor. The mode involves the time component of the gauge field that is related to the charge density wave in the dual superconductor. No additional ingredients are added to the action of five dimensional theory. We speculate on the relevance of the observed mode to the formation of the pseudogap state.
We investigate non-trivial localized solutions of the condensate in a (2+1)-dimensional D-wave holographic superconductor model in the presence of a background magnetic field. The calculation is done in the context of the (3+1)-dimensional dual gravity theory of a charged massive spin-2 field in an AdS black hole background. By using numeric techniques, we find both vortex and droplet solutions. These solutions are important for studying the full phase diagram of D-wave superconductors.
Analytical calculations of phase transitions in AdS3 Maxwell-scalar system, modeling a holographic superconductor, are performed in the probe limit of BTZ black hole background. Estimated values of the phase transition critical temperature and of the scalar boundary operator are compared with that obtained in numerical simulations. We discuss extensions of the model to topologically massive QED3 and to inclusion of external magnetic field. The latter becomes possible through the Barnett-London and the Lense-Thirring effects, but the former does not lead to any viable modifications. The standar…
We investigate the effect of order parameter fluctuations in the holographic superconductor. In particular, using a fully backreacted bulk geometry, the intrinsic spectral functions of the order parameter in both the normal and the superconducting phase are computed. We also present a vector-like large-$N$ version of the Ginzburg-Landau model that accurately describes our long-wavelength results in both phases. The large-$N$ limit of the latter model explains why the Higgs mode and the second-sound mode are not present in the spectral functions. Our results indicate that the holographic superc…
We study a model describing a four-dimensional holographic superconductor whose properties depend non-trivially on a particular spatial direction, namely a Josephson junction. We analyze the parameter dependence of the condensate and compare it to the condensed matter expectations.
Holographic models of superconductors successfully reproduce certain experimental features of high-temperature superconductors, such as a large gap-to-T_c ratio compared to that of conventional superconductors. By deconstructing the extra dimension of these holographic models, similar phenomenology is described by a class of models defined in the natural dimension of the superconducting system. We analyze the sensitivity of certain observables in holographic and deconstructed holographic superconductors to details of the extra-dimensional spacetime. Our results support the notion that certain …
We study direct currents in a simple holographic realization of a superconducting film. We investigate how the presence of a DC current affects the superconducting phase transition, which becomes first order for any non-vanishing value of the current, as well as several other properties of the superconductor such as the AC conductivity. Near the critical temperature we find a quantitative agreement with several properties of Ginzburg-Landau superconducting films, for example the squared ratio of the maximal and minimal condensate is equal to two thirds. We also comment on the extension of our …
Using a string inspired model we construct gravity duals generalizing px and p_x + ip_y superconductors. Introducing a Chern-Simons coupling in the gravity side we demonstrate the ability to control which phase dominates at low temperatures, and focus on the chiral p_x + ip_y phase. We study the fermionic spectral function and establish that the behavior is rather different from the standard p-wave two-nodes model.
We show that a hairy black hole solution can provide a holographically dual description of quark confinement. There exists a one-parameter sensible metric which receives the backreaction of matter contents in the holographic action, where the scalar and gauge field are responsible for the condensation of chromomagnetic monopoles. This model features a preconfining phase triggered by second-order monopole condensation and a first-order confinement/deconfinement phase transition. To confirm the confinement, the quark-antiquark potential is calculated by probing a QCD string in both phases. At la…
By using the RT formula and the subregion CV conjecture respectively, we numerically investigate the holographic entanglement entropy (HEE) and holographic subregion complexity (HSC) for two holographic d-wave superconducting models with backreactions. We find that both the HEE and HSC can be used as good probes to these two d-wave superconducting phase transitions. The HEE of superconducting phase is always lower than that of the normal phase due to the condensation of degrees of freedom below the critical temperature Tc. However, for the HSC, it behaves differently and interestingly, which d…
We comment on a simple way to accommodate translational symmetry breaking into the recently proposed holographic model which features a superconducting dome-shaped region on the temperature-doping phase diagram.
We study the effect of disorder in a holographic superconductor by introducing a quasi-periodic chemical potential. When the condensation of the superconductor is sufficiently small compared with the strength of disorder, we find that there exists a discontinuous phase transition from superconducting state to normal state with increasing disorder strength. For relatively large condensation, we find that disorder suppress but not completely destroy superconductivity. This model may provide a holographic realization of Anderson Localization in two-dimensional superconductor.
Classical SU(2) Yang-Mills theory in 3+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter space is known to provide a holographic dual to a 2+1 system that undergoes a superconducting phase transition. We study the electrical conductivity and spectral density of an isotropic superconducting phase. We show that the theory exhibits a pseudogap at low temperatures and a nonzero Hall conductivity. The Hall conductivity is possible because of spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry.
The general Ginzburg-Landau formulation of a holographic superconductor is developed near the transition temperature in the probe limit for two kinds of conformal dimension. Below the transition temperature, $T<T_c$, the order-parameter scales with $\sqrt{1-\frac{T}{T_c}}$ as expected. The G-L free energy in grand caonnical ensemble and canonical ensemble are derived and the gradient term is studied. Furthermore this scaling coefficient of order-parameter takes different values in the grand canonical ensemble and the canonical ensemble, suggesting the strong coupling nature of the boundary fie…
The p-wave and $p+ip$-wave holographic superconductors with fixed DC supercurrent are studied by introducing a non-vanishing vector potential. We find that close to the critical temperature $T_c$ of zero current, the numerical results of both the p wave model and the $p+ip$ model are the same as those of Ginzburg-Landau (G-L) theory, for example, the critical current $j_c \sim (T_c-T)^{3/2}$ and the phase transition in the presence of a DC current is a first order transition. Besides the similar results between both models, the $p+ip$ superconductor shows isotropic behavior for the supercurren…
Holographic superconductors have been studied so far in the absence of dynamical electromagnetic fields, namely in the limit in which they coincide with holographic superfluids. It is possible, however, to introduce dynamical gauge fields if a Neumann-type boundary condition is imposed on the AdS-boundary. In 3+1 dimensions, the dual theory is a 2+1 dimensional CFT whose spectrum contains a massless gauge field, signaling the emergence of a gauge symmetry. We study the impact of a dynamical gauge field in vortex configurations where it is known to significantly affect the energetics and phase …
We do more discussions of holographic s-wave superconductors in the background of AdS3 spacetime. We analytically compute the holographic superconductor model with the motion equation has two different characteristic root on the framework of Maxwell electrodynamics field. We study superconductor models on the framework of Born-Infeld electrodynamics field and on the framework of the Stückelberg form in the background of AdS3 spacetime.
We investigate the behaviors of entanglement entropy in the holographical insulator/superconductor phase transition. We calculate the holographic entanglement entropy for two kinds of geometry configurations in a completely back-reacted gravitational background describing the insulator/superconductor phase transition. The non-monotonic behavior of the entanglement entropy is found in this system. In the belt geometry case, there exist four phases characterized by the chemical potential and belt width.
We apply the soft wall holographic model from hadron physics to a description of the high-$T_c$ superconductivity. In comparison with the existing bottom-up holographic superconductors, the proposed approach is more phenomenological. On the other hand, it is much simpler and has more freedom for fitting the conductivity properties of the real high-$T_c$ materials. We demonstrate some examples of emerging models and discuss a possible origin of the approach.
Following a methodology similar to \cite{Alishahiha:2015rta}, we derive a holographic complexity for two dimensional holographic superconductors (gauge/string superconductors) with backreactions. Applying a perturbation method proposed by Kanno in Ref. \cite{kanno}, we study behaviors of the complexity for a dual quantum system near critical points. We show that when a system moves from the normal phase ($T>T_c$) to the superconductor phase ($T<T_c$), the holographic complexity will be divergent.
With the probe limit, we investigate the behavior of the electric permittivity and effective magnetic permeability and related optical properties in the s-wave holographic superconductors. In particular, our result shows that unlike the strong coupled systems which admit a gravity dual of charged black holes in the bulk, the electric permittivity and effective magnetic permeability are unable to conspire to bring about the negative Depine-Lakhtakia index at low frequencies, which implies that the negative phase velocity does not appear in the holographic superconductors under such a situation.
After the discovery of the $s$-wave and $p$-wave holographic superconductors, holographic models of $d$-wave superconductor have also been constructed recently. We study analytically the perturbation of the dual gravity theory to calculate the superconducting coherence length $ξ$ of the $d$-wave holographic superconductor near the superconducting phase transition point. The superconducting coherence length $ξ$ divergents as $(1-T/T_c)^{-1/2}$ near the critical temperature $T_c$. We also obtain the magnetic penetration depth $λ\propto(T_c-T)^{-1/2}$ by adding a small external homogeneous magnet…
We consider holographic superconductors related to the Schwarzschild black hole in the low energy limit of Hořava-Lifshitz spacetime. The non-relativistic electromagnetic and scalar fields are introduced to construct a holographic superconductor model in Hořava-Lifshitz gravity and the results show that the $α_2$ term plays an important role, modifying the conductivity curve line by means of an attenuation the conductivity.
The holographic superconductors, as one of the most important application of gauge/gravity duality, promote the study of strongly coupled superconductors via classical general relativity living in one higher dimension. One of the interesting properties in holographic superconductor is the appearance of first and second order phase transitions. Recently, another active studies in holographic framework is the holographic entanglement entropy and complexity evaluated from gravity side. In this note, we study the properties of the holographic entanglement entropy and complexity crossing both first…
In this Letter, we consider a Non-Commutative (NC) extension of AdS-CFT correspondence and its effects on holographic superconductors. NC corrections are incorporated via the NC generalization of Schwarzschild black hole metric in AdS with the probe limit. We study NC effects on the relations connecting the charge density and the critical temperature of the Holographic Superconductors. Furthermore, condensation operator of the superconductor has been analyzed. Our results suggest that generically, NC effects increase the critical temperature of the holographic superconductor.
We build a holographic description of non-relativistic system for superconductivity in strongly interacting condensed matter via gauge/gravity duality. We focus on the phase transition and give an example to show that a simple gravitational theory can provide a non-relativistic holographical dual description of a superconductor. There is also a critical temperature like the relativistic case, below which a charged condensation field appears by a second order phase transition and the (DC) conductivity becomes infinite. We also calculated the frequency dependent conductivity.
Despite its fundamental and practical interest, the understanding of mesoscopic effects in strongly coupled superconductors is still limited. Here we address this problem by studying holographic superconductivity in a disk and a strip of typical size $\ell$. For $\ell < \ell_c$, where $\ell_c$ depends on the chemical potential and temperature, we have found that the order parameter vanishes. The superconductor-metal transition at $\ell = \ell_c$ is controlled by mean-field critical exponents which suggests that quantum and thermal fluctuations induced by finite size effects are suppressed in h…
We use the matching method to investigate the first-order phase transition in holographic superconductor and superfluid. We first use the simple holographic superconductor model to describe the matching method and mention how to see the first-order phase transition. Next, we study the holographic superconductor with Stückelberg term and see that the analytic results indicate the existence of first-order phase transition. Finally, we study the holographic superfluid and show that the first-order phase transition can be found for some values of parameters. We determine the critical value analyti…
We study general models of holographic superconductors away from the probe limit. We find that the backreaction of the spacetime can bring richer physics in the phase transition. Moreover we observe that the ratio $ω_g/T_c$ changes with the strength of the backreaction and is not a universal constant.
We consider fermion correlators in non-abelian holographic superconductors. The spectral function of the fermions exhibits several interesting features such as support in displaced Dirac cones and an asymmetric distribution of normal modes. These features are compared to similar ones observed in angle resolved photoemission experiments on high T_c superconductors. Along the way we elucidate some properties of p-wave superconductors in AdS_4 and discuss the construction of SO(4) superconductors.
We study the entanglement entropy of general holographic dual models both in AdS soliton and AdS black hole backgrounds with full backreaction. We find that the entanglement entropy is a good probe to explore the properties of the holographic superconductors and provides richer physics in the phase transition. We obtain the effects of the scalar mass, model parameter and backreaction on the entropy, and argue that the jump of the entanglement entropy may be a quite general feature for the first order phase transition. In strong contrast to the insulator/superconductor system, we note that the …
Using a five dimensional AdS soliton in an Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with SU(2) gauge group we study p-wave holographic insulator/superconductor phase transition. To explore the phase structure of the model we consider the system in the probe limit as well as fully back reacted solutions. We will also study zero temperature limit of the p-wave holographic superconductor in four dimensions.
As a first step towards our holographic investigation of the far-from-equilibrium physics of periodically driven systems at strong coupling, we explore the real time dynamics of holographic superconductor driven by a monochromatically alternating electric field with various frequencies. As a result, our holographic superconductor is driven to the final oscillating state, where the condensate is suppressed and the oscillation frequency is controlled by twice of the driving frequency. In particular, in the large frequency limit, the three distinct channels towards the final steady state are foun…
We studied entanglement entropy for a time dependent two dimensional holographic superconductor. We showed that the conserved charge of the system plays the role of the critical parameter to have condensation.
We have studied holographic superconductors with spherical symmetry in the Ho$\check{\textbf{r}}$ava-Lifshitz gravity by using a semi analytical method, and also we have calculated the critical temperature and shown when the condensation will appear in a similar pattern as in the Einstein-Gauss- Bonnet gravity. We have computed the dependency of the conductivity as a function of frequency in this new non-relativistic model of quantum gravity.
We consider holographic superconductors in a broad class of massive gravity backgrounds. These theories provide a holographic description of a superconductor with broken translational symmetry. Such models exhibit a rich phase structure: depending on the values of the temperature and the disorder strength the boundary system can be in superconducting, normal metallic or normal pseudoinsulating phases. Furthermore the system supports interesting collective excitation of the charge carriers, which appears in the normal phase, persists in the superconducting phase, but eventually gets destroyed b…
We study the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a 2d holographic p-wave superconductor model with a homogeneous source quench on the critical point. We derive, on general grounds, the scaling of the Kibble-Zurek time, which marks breaking-down of adiabaticity. It is expressed in terms of four critical exponents, including three static and one dynamical exponents. Via explicit calculations within a holographic model, we confirm the scaling of the Kibble-Zurek time and obtain the scaling functions in the quench process. We find the results are formally similar to a homogeneous quench in a higher dimensio…
We study a truncation of four-dimensional maximal gauged supergravity that provides a realization of the minimal model of a holographic superconductor. We find various flow solutions in this truncation at zero and finite temperature with a non-trivial profile for the charged scalar. Below a critical temperature we find holographic superconductor solutions that represent the thermodynamically preferred phase. Depending on the choice of boundary conditions, the superconducting phase transition is either first or second order. For vanishing temperature we find a flow with a condensing charged sca…
In the last years it has been shown that some properties of strongly coupled superconductors can be potentially described by classical general relativity living in one higher dimension, which is known as holographic superconductors. This paper gives a quick and introductory overview of some holographic superconductor models with s-wave, p-wave and d-wave orders in the literature from point of view of bottom-up, and summarizes some basic properties of these holographic models in various regimes. The competition and coexistence of these superconductivity orders are also studied in these supercon…
We study "holographic superconductors" in various spacetime dimensions. We compute most of the static critical exponents in the linear perturbations and show that they take the standard mean-field values. We also consider the dynamic universality class for these models and show that they belong to model A with dynamic critical exponent z=2.
We find, by an appropriate extension of the standard holographic superconductor setup, static bulk solutions which describe holographic duals to non-Abelian vortices. In the core of these vortices a scalar field condenses, breaking a non-Abelian global symmetry which leads to additional zero modes called orientational moduli. These moduli appear in the bulk as Goldstone bosons associated to the condensation of a neutral scalar field.
In this paper we propose a generalised holographic framework to describe superconductors. We first unify the description of s-, p- and d-wave superconductors in a way that can be easily promoted to higher spin. Using a semi-analytical procedure to compute the superconductor properties, we are able to further generalise the geometric description of the hologram beyond the AdS-Schwarzschild Black Hole paradigm, and propose a set of higher-dimensional metrics which exhibit the same universal behaviour. We then study the properties of the condensate and the scaling of the critical temperature with…
We construct a type-II holographic superconductor from an anisotropic rotating background metric. We study the effects of the magnetic field on the vortex structure, including continuous deformations both from triangular to square lattices or vice versa. Our holographic model reproduces known experimental vortex lattice deformations and the increment of the vortex population by increasing the external magnetic field.
We study the one dimensional s-wave holographic superconductor by turning on the vector potential $A_x$ in the bulk, which behaves as $A_x=A_x^{(0)} \ln z+ A_x^{(1)}$ on the boundary. By solving the model with fixed $A_x^{(0)}$, we find that if we identify the $A_x^{(0)}$ with the supercurrent $j_x$ of the holographic superconductor, the results agree with the Gindzburg- Landau theory. For example, $A_x^{(0)}$ will break the superconductivity, and the critical value of $A_x^{(0)}$ is proportional to $(T_c-T)^{3/2}$.
In this paper we investigate the model of the anti-de Sitter gravity coupled to a Maxwell field and a free, complex scalar field, and construct a fully back-reacted holographic model of superconductor with excited states. With the fixed charge $q$, there exist a series of excited states of holographic superconductor with the corresponding critical chemical potentials. The condensates as functions of the temperature for the two operators $\mathcal{O}_1$ and $\mathcal{O}_2$ of excited states are also studied. For the optical conductivity in the excited states, we find that there exist the additi…
We extend earlier treatments of holographic superconductors by studying cases where operators of different dimension condense in both 2+1 and 3+1 superconductors. We also compute a correlation length. We find surprising regularities in quantities such as $ω_g/T_c$ where $ω_g$ is the gap in the frequency dependent conductivity. In special cases, new bound states arise corresponding to vector normal modes of the dual near-extremal black holes.
We consider holographic superconductors in a rotating black string spacetime. In view of the mandatory introduction of the $A_φ$ component of the vector potential we are left with three equations to be solved. Their solutions show that the effect of the rotating parameter $a$ influences the critical temperature $T_c$ and the conductivity $σ$ in a simple but not trivial way.
We investigate the holographic superconductors in Gauss-Bonnet gravity with Born-Infeld electrodynamics. We find that the Gauss-Bonnet constant, the model parameters and the Born-Infeld coupling parameter will affect the formation of the scalar hair, the transition point of the phase transition from the second order to the first order, and the relation connecting the gap frequency in conductivity with the critical temperature. The combination of the Gauss-Bonnet gravity and the Born-Infeld electrodynamics provides richer physics in the phase transition and the condensation of the scalar hair.
