Gravity solutions dual to d-dimensional field theories at finite charge density have a near-horizon region which is AdS_2 x R^{d-1}. The scale invariance of the AdS_2 region implies that at low energies the dual field theory exhibits emergent quantum critical behavior controlled by a (0+1)-dimensional CFT. This interpretation sheds light on recently-discovered holographic descriptions of Fermi surfaces, allowing an analytic understanding of their low-energy excitations. For example, the scaling behavior near the Fermi surfaces is determined by conformal dimensions in the emergent IR CFT. In particular, when the operator is marginal in the IR CFT, the corresponding spectral function is precisely of the "Marginal Fermi Liquid" form, postulated to describe the optimally doped cuprates.
We find new black 3-brane solutions describing the "conifold gauge theory" at nonzero temperature and baryonic chemical potential. Of particular interest is the low-temperature limit where we find a new kind of weakly curved near-horizon geometry; it is a warped product AdS_2 x R^3 x T^{1,1} with warp factors that are powers of the logarithm of the AdS radius. Thus, our solution encodes a new type of emergent quantum near-criticality. We carry out some stability checks for our solutions. We also set up a consistent ansatz for baryonic black 2-branes of M-theory that are asymptotic to AdS_4 x Q…
We refer to the ground state of a gravitating, charged ideal fluid of fermions held at a finite chemical potential as an `electron star'. In a holographic setting, electron stars are candidate gravity duals for strongly interacting finite fermion density systems. We show how electron stars develop an emergent Lifshitz scaling at low energies. This IR scaling region is a consequence of the two way interaction between emergent quantum critical bosonic modes and the finite density of fermions. By integrating from the IR region to an asymptotically AdS_4 spacetime, we compute basic properties of t…
Quantum spin liquids (QSL) are exotic phases of matter that host fractionalized excitations. It is difficult for local probes to characterize QSL, whereas quantum entanglement can serve as a powerful diagnostic tool due to its non-locality. The kagome antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model is one of the most studied and experimentally relevant models for QSL, but its solution remains under debate. Here, we perform a numerical Aharonov-Bohm experiment on this model and uncover universal features of the entanglement entropy. By means of the density-matrix renormalization group, we reveal the entangl…
We consider the role of spontaneous lattice symmetry breaking in strongly interacting two dimensional Dirac systems. The fermion induced quantum (multi-)criticality is described by Dirac fermions coupled to a dynamical order parameter that is composed of mass and emergent gauge fields. This is illustrated for the example of translational symmetry breaking due to charge-density wave order on the honeycomb lattice. Using a renormalization-group analysis we find that the putative emergent Lorentz invariance is violated. Finally, we identify that topological phase transitions are well described by…
Emergent Scaling Symmetry and Universal Interior Criticality of Scalarized Black Holes
Ningbo University（宁波大学）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院）；Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, UCAS（中国科学院大学杭州高等研究院）；Tianjin University（天津大学）
Detecting (emergent) continuous symmetry of criticality via subsystem's entanglement spectrum
Westlake University（西湖大学）；University of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences（健康与康复科学大学）；Westlake Institute for Advanced Study（西湖高等研究院）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）
Recently, a novel emergent phase can occur from thermodynamic consideration of the asymptotically flat Reissner-Nordström black hole (RN-AF) using Rényi statistics. We present an analysis of the thermodynamical and mechanical stabilities of the RN-AF in both the Gibbs-Boltzmann (GB) and the alternative Rényi statistics when charge $q$ and electrostatic potential $ϕ$ are treated as pressure and volume, respectively. Interestingly, the emergent phase of the RN-AF can be both thermodynamically and mechanically stable in some range of parameters in the framework of Rényi thermodynamics. With the c…
No definitive evidence of spacetime supersymmetry (SUSY) that transmutes fermions into bosons and vice versa has been revealed in nature so far. Moreover, whether spacetime SUSY in 2+1 and higher dimensions can occur or emerge in generic microscopic models remains open. Here, we introduce a lattice realization of a \textit{single} Dirac fermion with attractive Hubbard interactions that preserves both time-reversal and chiral symmetries. By performing numerically-exact sign-problem-free determinant quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the interacting single Dirac fermion in 2+1 dimensi…
Emergent spacetime supersymmetry at 2D fractionalized quantum criticality
Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University（清华大学高等研究院）；Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所计算量子物理中心）；Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, Tulane University（杜兰大学物理与工程物理系）
We identify the near-critical effective theory (EFT) for a wide class of low-temperature phase transitions found via holography. The EFT is of the semi-holographic type and describes both holographic Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) and second-order transitions with non-trivial scaling. It is a simple generalization of the Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson paradigm to systems with an emergent (or hidden) conformal sector. Having identified the near-critical EFT, we explore its basic phenomenology by computing critical exponents and low-frequency correlators.
We formulate the effective Gross-Neveu-Yukawa theory of the semimetal-insulator transitions on the honeycomb lattice and compute its quantum critical behavior near three (spatial) dimensions. We find that at the critical point Dirac fermions do not survive as coherent excitations and that the $\sim 1/r$ tail of the weak Coulomb interaction is an irrelevant coupling. The emergent Lorentz invariance near criticality implies a universal ratio of the low-temperature specific heats of the metallic and the rotational-symmetry-broken insulating phase.
The Fermi liquid has an emergent low-energy symmetry that corresponds to charge conservation at each momentum on the Ferm surface. Recently Else, Thorngren and Senthil (ETS) argued that the emergent symmetry had a specific t'Hooft anomaly. We give a simple derivation of the ETS anomaly using the chiral anomaly of Weyl fermions.
We present a functional renormalization group analysis of a quantum critical point in two-dimensional metals involving Fermi surface reconstruction due to the onset of spin-density wave order. Its critical theory is controlled by a fixed point in which the order parameter and fermionic quasiparticles are strongly coupled and acquire spectral functions with a common dynamic critical exponent. We obtain results for critical exponents and for the variation in the quasiparticle spectral weight around the Fermi surface. Our analysis is implemented on a two-band variant of the spin-fermion model whi…
We analyze the quantum phase transition between a semimetal and a superfluid in a model of attractively interacting fermions with a linear dispersion. The quantum critical properties of this model cannot be treated by the Hertz-Millis approach since integrating out the fermions leads to a singular Landau-Ginzburg order parameter functional. We therefore derive and solve coupled renormalization group equations for the fermionic degrees of freedom and the bosonic order parameter fluctuations. In two spatial dimensions, fermions and bosons acquire anomalous scaling dimensions at the quantum criti…
We study the spectral functions of fermionic operators in 1+1 dimensional SU(N) Super Yang-Mills theory with 16 supercharges at finite density using the holographically dual D1-brane geometry. This system exhibits quasi-particle peaks indicating the existence of Fermi points about which excitations have a finite relaxation time, in contrast with the Tomonaga-Luttinger model. The finite width may be attributed to the non-trivial interactions of the probe operators with the background density matrix, modeled holographically as a charged black hole. We show that the fermionic correlators can in f…
The quantum phase transition to a $\mathbb{Z}_3$-ordered Kekulé valence bond solid in two-dimensional Dirac semimetals is governed by a fermion-induced quantum critical point, which renders the putatively discontinuous transition continuous. We study the resulting universal critical behavior in terms of a functional RG approach, which gives access to the scaling behavior on the symmetry-broken side of the phase transition, for general dimension and number of Dirac fermions. In particular, we investigate the emergence of the fermion-induced quantum critical point for space-time dimensions $2<d<…
We correct our previous conclusion regarding the fate of a charged quantum critical point across the superconducting transition for two dimensional massless Dirac fermion. Within the leading order $ε$ expansion, we now find that the requisite number of four-component Dirac fermion flavors ($N_f$) for the continuous phase transition through a charged critical point is $N_f>18.2699$. For $N_f\geq1/2$, the critical number of bosonic flavors for this transition is significantly reduced as compared to the value determined in the absence of the Dirac fermions in the theory.
In this paper, we study the fermionic excitations near the quantum criticality using gauge/gravity duality. This is motivated by exploring the Fermi surface evolution near the quantum criticality. We construct the gravity dual of "paramagnetic-nematic" phase transition in a continuum limit and study the Fermi surface evolution across this quantum phase transition. We find that there exists non-Fermi liquid with the Fermi surface in the "paramagnetic" phase and the Fermi surface disappears in the "nematic" phase.
We show that the Aretakis instability of compact extremal horizons persists in the planar case of interest to holography and discuss its connection with the emergence of "semi-local quantum criticality" in the field theory dual. In particular, the spatially localized power-law decay of this critical phase corresponds to spatially localized power-law growth of stress-energy on the horizon. For near-extremal black holes these phenomena occur transiently over times of order the inverse temperature. The boundary critical phase is characterized by an emergent temporal conformal symmetry, and the bu…
A holographic description on antiferromagnetic quantum phase transition (QPT) induced by magnetic field and the criticality in the vicinity of quantum critical point (QCP) have been investigated numerically recently. In this paper, we show that the properties of QPT in this holographic model are governed by a CFT dual to the emergent AdS$_2$ in the IR region, which confirms that the dual boundary theory is a strong coupling theory with dynamic exponent $z=2$ and logarithmic corrections appear. We also compare them with the results from Hertz model by solving RG equation at its upper critical d…
The frequency dependence of the AC conductivity is studied in a holographic model of a non-fermi liquid that is amenable to both analytical and numerical computation. In the regime that dissipation dominates the DC conductivity, the AC conductivity is described well in the IR by a Drude peak despite the absence of quasiparticles. In the regime where pair-production-like processes dominate the conductivity there is no Drude peak. A scaling tail is found for the AC conductivity that is independent of the charge density and momentum dissipation. Evidence is given that this scaling tail $σ_{AC}\si…
We study a simple model of three-dimensional fermions close to a quadratic band touching point, built from the celebrated Luttinger single-particle Hamiltonian and an attractive contact interaction between the particles. Such a system displays a novel quantum critical point between the semimetallic and an s-wave superconducting phase at which the low-energy "Luttinger fermions" are inextricably coupled to the order parameter fluctuations. The quantum critical point is perturbatively accessible near four spatial dimensions, where it features nontrivial scaling with dynamical exponent 1<z<2 and …
Progress in the understanding of quantum critical properties of itinerant electrons has been hindered by the lack of effective models which are amenable to controlled analytical and numerically exact calculations. Here we establish that the disorder driven semimetal to metal quantum phase transition of three dimensional massless Dirac fermions could serve as a paradigmatic toy model for studying itinerant quantum criticality, which is solved in this work by exact numerical and approximate field theoretic calculations. As a result, we establish the robust existence of a non-Gaussian universalit…
In Ref. \cite{Horava2005} Hořava suggested, that the multi - fermion many-body system with topologically stable Fermi surfaces may effectively be described (in a vicinity of the Fermi surface) by the theory with coarse-grained fermions. The number of the components of these coarse-grained fermions is reduced compared to the original system. Here we consider the $3+1$ D system and concentrate on the particular case when the Fermi surface has co-dimension $p=3$, i.e. it represents the Fermi point in momentum space. First we demonstrate explicitly that in agreement with Hořava conjecture, in the …
We study renormalization group flows in strongly interacting field theories with fermions that correspond to transitions between a theory without Lorentz invariance at high energies down to a theory with approximate Lorentz symmetry in the infrared. Holographic description of the strong coupling is used. The emphasis is made on emergence of chiral fermions in the low-energy theory.
