To appear in Lect. Notes Phys. "Strongly interacting matter in magnetic fields" (Springer), edited by D. Kharzeev, K. Landsteiner, A. Schmitt, H.-U. Yee
Holographic methods are used to investigate the low temperature limit, including quantum critical behavior, of strongly coupled 4-dimensional gauge theories in the presence of an external magnetic field, and finite charge density. In addition to the metric, the dual gravity theory contains a Maxwell field with Chern-Simons coupling. In the absence of charge, the magnetic field induces an RG flow to an infrared AdS$_3 \times {\bf R}^2$ geometry, which is dual to a 2-dimensional CFT representing strongly interacting fermions in the lowest Landau level. Two asymptotic Virasoro algebras and one chiral Kac-Moody algebra arise as {\sl emergent symmetries} in the IR. Including a nonzero charge density reveals a quantum critical point when the magnetic field reaches a critical value whose scale is set by the charge density. The critical theory is probed by the study of long-distance correlation functions of the boundary stress tensor and current. All quantities of major physical interest in this system, such as critical exponents and scaling functions, can be computed analytically. We also study an asymptotically AdS$_6$ system whose magnetic field induced quantum critical point is governed by a IR Lifshitz geometry, holographically dual to a D=2+1 field theory. The behavior of these holographic theories shares important similarities with that of real world quantum critical systems obtained by tuning a magnetic field, and may be relevant to materials such as Strontium Ruthenates.
In this paper we propose new non-relativistic p+1 dimensional theory. This theory is defined in such a way that the potential term obeys the principle of detailed balance where the generating action corresponds to p-brane action. This condition ensures that the norm of the vacuum wave functional of p+1 dimensional theory is equal to the partition function of p-brane theory.
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 show that the inclusion of higher curvature terms in the gravitational action can lead to phase transitions and critical behaviour for charged black branes. The higher curvature terms considered here belong to the recently constructed generalized quasi-topological class [ArXiv: 1703.01631], which possess a number of interesting properties, such as being ghost-free on constant curvature backgrounds and non-trivial in four dimensions. We show that critical behaviour is a generic feature of the black branes in all dimensions $d \ge 4$, and contextualize the results with a review of the propert…
We study the effective hydrodynamics of neutral black branes enclosed in a finite cylindrical cavity with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We focus on how the Gregory-Laflamme instability changes as we vary the cavity radius R. Fixing the metric at the cavity wall increases the rigidity of the black brane by hindering gradients of the redshift on the wall. In the effective fluid, this is reflected in the growth of the squared speed of sound. As a consequence, when the cavity is smaller than a critical radius the black brane becomes dynamically stable. The correlation with the change in thermodyn…
Quantum critical behavior in 2+1 dimensions is established via holographic methods in a 5+1-dimensional Einstein gravity theory with gauge potential form fields of rank 1 and 2. These fields are coupled to one another via a tri-linear Chern-Simons term with strength k. The quantum phase transition is physically driven by the expulsion of the electric charge from inside the black brane horizon to the outside, where it gets carried by the gauge fields which acquire charge thanks to the Chern-Simons interaction. At a critical value k=k_c, zero temperature, and any finite value of the magnetic fie…
We propose a toy model for study merger transitions in a curved spaceime with an arbitrary number of dimensions. This model includes a bulk N-dimensional static spherically symmetric black hole and a test D-dimensional brane interacting with the black hole. The brane is asymptotically flat and allows O(D-1) group of symmetry. Such a brane--black-hole (BBH) system has two different phases. The first one is formed by solutions describing a brane crossing the horizon of the bulk black hole. In this case the internal induced geometry of the brane describes D-dimensional black hole. The other phase…
In the context of the $AdS_4\times Q^{111}$ solution of D=11 supergravity we construct supersymmetric zero temperature black brane solutions that interpolate between $AdS_4$ in the UV and $AdS_2\times \mathbb{R}^2$ in the IR. The dual N=2 SCFT has a $U(1)^2$ baryonic symmetry and the solutions carry electric charge with respect to one of the U(1) factors and magnetic charge with respect to the other. The solutions describe stable zero temperature ground states of the deformed SCFT which have finite entropy density. We also construct analogous supersymmetric solutions that flow to $AdS_2\times …
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…
We consider a theory for a two-dimensional interacting conduction electron system with strong spin-orbit coupling on the interface between a topological insulator and the magnetic (ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic) layer. For the ferromagnetic case we derive the Landau-Lifshitz equation, which features a contribution proportional to a fluctuation-induced electric field obtained by computing the topological (Chern-Simons) contribution from the vacuum polarization. We also show that fermionic quantum fluctuations reduce the critical temperature $\tilde T_c$ at the interface relative to the cri…
Quantum phase transitions (QPTs) arise as a result of competing interactions in a quantum many-body system. Kondo lattice models, containing a lattice of localized magnetic moments and a band of conduction electrons, naturally feature such competing interactions. A Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) exchange interaction among the local moments promotes magnetic ordering. However, a Kondo exchange interaction between the local moments and conduction electrons favors the Kondo-screened singlet ground state. This chapter summarizes the basic physics of QPTs in antiferromagnetic Kondo lattice sy…
We discuss the scattering of a light closed-string state off a $D$ brane, taking into account quantum recoil effects on the latter, which are described by a pair of logarithmic operators. The light-particle and $D$-brane subsystems may each be described by a world-sheet with an external source due to the interaction between them. This perturbs each subsystem away from criticality, which is compensated by dressing with a Liouville field whose zero mode we interpret as time. The resulting evolution equations for the $D$ brane and the closed string are of Fokker-Planck and modified quantum Liouvi…
String compactifications with D-branes may exhibit regular magnetic monopole solutions, whose presence does not rely on broken non-abelian gauge symmetry. These stringy monopoles exist on interesting metastable brane configurations, such as anti-D3 branes inside a flux compactification or D5-branes wrapping 2-cycles that are locally stable but globally trivial. In brane realizations of SM-like gauge theories, the monopoles carry one unit of magnetic hypercharge. Their mass can range from the string scale down to the multi-TeV regime.
We consider the Higgs branch of 5d fixed points engineered using brane webs with an O7$^+$-plane. We use the brane construction to propose a set of rules to extract the corresponding magnetic quivers. Such magnetic quivers are generically framed non-simply-laced quivers containing unitary as well as special unitary gauge nodes. We compute the Coulomb branch Hilbert series of the proposed magnetic quivers. In some specific cases, an alternative magnetic quiver can be obtained either using an ordinary brane web or a brane web with an O5-plane. In these cases, we find a match at the level of the …
We consider a D7-brane probe of $AdS_{5}\times S^5$ in the presence of pure gauge $B$-field. The dual gauge theory is flavored Yang-Mills theory in external magnetic field. We explore the dependence of the fermionic condensate on the bare quark mass $m_{q}$ and study the discrete self-similar behavior of the theory near the origin of the parametric space. We calculate the critical exponents of the bare quark mass and the fermionic condensate. A study of the meson spectrum supports the expectation based on thermodynamic considerations that at zero bare quark mass the stable phase of the theory …
We study supersymmetric intersecting configurations of D-branes with B-field backgrounds. Noncommutative D-brane or M-brane pairs can intersect supersymmetrically over (p-1)-brane, as well as over (p-2)-brane like ordinary branes. d=10 and d=11 supergravity solutions are obtained and the supersymmetry projection rule is examined. As an application we study a noncommutative D7-brane probe in noncommutative D3-brane background, intersecting at noncommutative plane, which describes BPS baryons of noncommutative gauge theory in the context of AdS/CFT correspondence.
We study the attractor mechanism of dual pairs of black brane bounds in N=2 supergravity in six and seven dimensions. First, we consider the effective potentials of the 6D and 7D black branes as well as their entropies. The contribution coming from the SO(1,1) factor of the moduli spaces M_{6D} and M_{7D} of these theories is carefully analyzed and it is used to motivate the study of the dual black branes bounds; which in turn allow to fix the critical value of the dilaton at horizon. The attractor eqs of the black branes and the bound pairs are derived by combining the criticality conditions …
We investigate how the presence of RR magnetic $F_{p+2}$ fluxes affects the energy of classical Dp branes, for specific string theory supersymmetric backgrounds which are solutions to the leading order in $α'$ including back-reaction effects. The Dp brane dynamics is found to be similar to the well known dynamics of particles and strings moving in magnetic fields. We find a class of BPS solutions which generalize the BPS fundamental strings or BPS branes with momentum and winding to the case of non-zero magnetic fields. Remarkably, the interaction with the magnetic fields does not spoil the su…
We present a general description of electromagnetic RR interactions between pairs of magnetically dual D-branes, focusing on the interaction of a magnetically charged brane with an electrically charged one. In the boundary state formalism, it turns out that while the electric-electric and/or magnetic-magnetic interaction corresponds to the usual RR even spin structure, the magnetic-electric interaction is described by the RR odd spin structure. As representative of the generic case of a dual pair of p and 6-p branes, we discuss in detail the case of the self-dual 3-brane wrapped on a T_6/Z_3, …
We study the magnetic analogue of Myers' Dielectric Effect and, in some cases, relate it to the blowing up of particles into branes, first investigated by Greevy, Susskind and Toumbas. We show that $D0$ branes or gravitons in M theory, moving in a magnetic four-form field strength background expand into a non-commutative two sphere. Both examples of constant magnetic field and non-constant fields in curved backgrounds generated by branes are considered. We find, in all cases, another solution, consisting of a two-brane wrapping a classical two-sphere, which has all the quantum numbers of the $…
We present two new classes of magnetic brane solutions in Einstein-Maxwell-Gauss-Bonnet gravity with a negative cosmological constant. The first class of solutions yields an $(n+1)$-dimensional spacetime with a longitudinal magnetic field generated by a static magnetic brane. We also generalize this solution to the case of spinning magnetic branes with one or more rotation parameters. We find that these solutions have no curvature singularity and no horizons, but have a conic geometry. In these spacetimes, when all the rotation parameters are zero, the electric field vanishes, and therefore th…
D2-branes are studied in the context of Born-Infeld theory as a source of the 3-form RR gauge potential. Considering the static case with only a radial magnetic field it is shown that a locally stable hemispherical deformation of the brane exists which minimises the energy locally. Since the D2-brane carries also the charge of D0-branes, and the RR spacetime potential is unbounded from below, these can tunnel to condense on the D2-brane. The corresponding instanton-like configuration and the tunneling rate are derived and discussed.
We use the Myers T-dual nonabelin Born-Infeld action to find some new nontrivial solutions for the branes in the background of D6-branes and Melvin magnetic tube field. In the D6-Branes background we can find both of the fuzzy sphere and fuzzy ring solutions, which are formed by the gravitational dielectric effect. We see that the fuzzy ring solution has less energy then that of the fuzzy sphere. Therefore the fuzzy sphere will decay to the fuzzy ring configuration. In the Melvin magnetic tube field background there does not exist fuzzy sphere while the fuzzy ring configuration may be formed b…
We study thermalization on rotating probe branes in AdS_5 x S^5 background in the presence of constant external electric and magnetic fields. In the AdS/CFT framework this corresponds to thermalization in the flavour sector in field theory. The horizon appears on the worldvolume of the probe brane due to its rotation in one of the sphere directions. For both electric and magnetic fields the behaviour of the temperature is independent of the probe brane dimension. We also study the open string metric and the fluctuations of the probe brane in such a set-up. We show that the temperatures obtaine…
We present a new class of magnetic brane solutions in $(n+1)$-dimensional Brans-Dicke-Maxwell theory in the presence of a quadratic potential for the scalar field. These solutions are neither asymptotically flat nor (anti)-de Sitter. Our strategy for constructing these solutions is applying a conformal transformation to the corresponding solutions in dilaton gravity. This class of solutions represents a spacetime with a longitudinal magnetic field generated by a static brane. They have no curvature singularity and no horizons but have a conic geometry with a deficit angle $δ$. We generalize th…
A tubular D3-brane with electromagnetic flux is considered. It is verified that the quantized electric and magnetic charges are the F-string and D-string charges of the brane, respectively. The D3-brane with parallel electric and magnetic fields collapses to the bound state of strings. A D3-brane with nonzero Poynting vector can be viewed as expanded FD strings. A fundamental string is viewed as a collapsed D3-brane and mapped to the (n,m) strings via electric-magnetic duality rotations. This mapping is the same as a weak-strong duality transformation and therefore reveals the equivalence of t…
We study the Higgs branch of 5d superconformal theories engineered from brane webs with orientifold five-planes. We propose a generalization of the rules to derive magnetic quivers from brane webs pioneered in arXiv:2004.04082, by analyzing theories that can be described with a brane web with and without O5 planes. Our proposed magnetic quivers include novel features, such as hypermultiplets transforming in the fundamental-fundamental representation of two gauge nodes, antisymmetric matter, and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge nodes. We test our results by computing the Coulomb and Higgs branch Hilbert se…
Using analytical methods, we derive and extend previously obtained numerical results on the low temperature properties of holographic duals to four-dimensional gauge theories at finite density in a nonzero magnetic field. We find a new asymptotically AdS_5 solution representing the system at zero temperature. This solution has vanishing entropy density, and the charge density in the bulk is carried entirely by fluxes. The dimensionless magnetic field to charge density ratio for these solutions is bounded from below, with a quantum critical point appearing at the lower bound. Using matched asym…
It is known that in the Minkowski vacuum a bunch of IIA superstrings with D0-branes can be blown-up to a supersymmetric tubular D2-brane, which is supported against collapse by the angular momentum generated by crossed electric and magnetic Born-Infeld (BI) fields. In this paper we show how the multiple, smaller tubes with relative angular momentum could condense to a single, larger tube to stabilize the system. Such a phenomena could also be shown in the systems under the Melvin magnetic tube or uniform magnetic field background. However, depending on the magnitude of field strength, a tube i…
We probe the effective worldvolume theory of a set of coinciding D-branes by switching on constant electro-magnetic fields on them. The comparison of the mass spectrum predicted by string theory with the mass spectrum obtained from the effective action provides insights in the structure of the effective theory.
We present a class of magnetically charged brane solutions for the theory of Einstein-Maxwell gravity with a negative cosmological constant in an arbitrary number of spacetime dimensions.
We investigate spatially modulated instabilities of magnetically charged $AdS_{2}\times\mathbb{R}^2$, $AdS_{3}\times\mathbb{R}^2$ and $AdS_{2}\times\mathbb{R}^3$ backgrounds in a broad class of theories, including those arising from KK reductions of ten and eleven dimensional supergravity. We show that magnetically charged black brane solutions in D=4,5 spacetime dimensions, whose zero temperature near horizon limit approach these backgrounds, can have instabilities that are dual to phases with current density waves that spontaneously break translation symmetry. Our examples include spatially …
Recently a proposal for the non-abelian effective D-brane action was given through fourth order in alpha'. As the resulting expressions turned out to be quite involved, some checks of this result are called for. In the present paper we calculate the spectrum in the presence of constant magnetic background fields and compare it to the string theoretical result. Apart from a small typo in the original expression (the overall sign of thefourth order term), we obtain perfect agreement. We discuss potential applications.
The low energy limit of the stress tensor, gauge current, and supercurrent two-point correlators are calculated in the background of the supersymmetric magnetic brane solution to gauged five-dimensional supergravity constructed by Almuhairi and Polchinski. The resulting correlators provide evidence for the emergence of an N=2 super-Virasoro algebra of right-movers, in addition to a bosonic Virasoro algebra and a $U(1) \oplus U(1)$-current algebra of left-movers (or the parity transform of left- and right-movers depending on the sign of the magnetic field), in the holographically dual strongly …
Magnetic quivers have led to significant progress in the understanding of gauge theories with 8 supercharges at UV fixed points. For a given low-energy gauge theory realised via a Type II brane construction, there exist magnetic quivers for the Higgs branches at finite and infinite gauge coupling. Comparing these moduli spaces allows to study the non-perturbative effects when transitioning to the fixed point. For 5d $\mathcal{N}=1$ SQCD, 5-brane webs have been an important tool for deriving magnetic quivers. In this work, the emphasis is placed on 5-brane webs with orientifold 5-planes which g…
The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon is evaluated in the D-brane realization of the Standard Model. It is pointed out that the massive anomalous U(1) gauge bosons predicted, give extra contributions that are compatible with current experimental data.
There is a close relation between classical supergravity and quantum SYM descriptions of interactions between separated branes. In the case of D3 branes, the equivalence of leading-order potentials is due to non-renormalization of the F^4 term in N=4 SYM theory. Here we point out the existence of another special non-renormalized term in quantum SYM effective action. This term reproduces the interaction potential between electric charge of a D3-brane probe and magnetic charge of a D3-brane source, represented by the Chern-Simons part of the D-brane action. This unique Wess-Zumino term depends o…
The Higgs branches of the world-volume theories for multiple M5 branes on an $A_k$ or $D_k$-type ALE space are known to host a variety of fascinating properties, such as the small $E_8$ instanton transition or the discrete gauging phenomena. This setup can be further enriched by the inclusion of boundary conditions, which take the form of $SU(k)$ or $SO(2k)$ partitions, respectively. Unlike the $A$-type case, $D$-type boundary conditions are eventually accompanied by negative brane numbers in the Type IIA brane realisation. While this may seem discouraging at first, we demonstrate that these s…
The main purpose of the present paper is analyzing magnetic brane solutions of cubic quasi-topological gravity in the presence of a linear electromagnetic Maxwell field and a nonlinear electromagnetic Born-Infeld field. We show that the mentioned magnetic solutions have no curvature singularity and also no horizons, but we observe that there is a conic geometry with a related deficit angle. We obtain the metric function and deficit angle and consider their behavior. We show that the attributes of our solution are dependent on cubic quasi-topological coefficient and the Gauss-Bonnet parameter.
We review orientifold constructions in the presence of magnetic backgrounds both in the open and closed sectors. Generically, the resulting orientifold models have a nice geometric description in terms of rotated D-branes and/or O-planes. In the case of multiple magnetic backgrounds, some amount of supersymmetry is recovered if the magnetic fields are suitably chosen and part of the original D-branes and/or O-planes are transmuted into new ones.
Clusters and droplets of positive spins in the two-dimensional Ising model percolate at the Curie temperature in absence of external field. The percolative exponents coincide with the magnetic ones for droplets but not for clusters. We use integrable field theory to determine amplitude ratios which characterize the approach to criticality within these two universality classes of percolative critical behavior.
We investigate brane-worlds with a pure magnetic field and a perfect fluid. We extend earlier work to brane-worlds, and find new properties of the Bianchi type I brane-world. We find new asymptotic behaviours on approach to the singularity and classify the critical points of the dynamical phase space. It is known that the Einstein equations for the magnetic Bianchi type I models are in general oscillatory and are believed to be chaotic, but in the brane-world model this chaotic behaviour does not seem to be possible.
We investigate AdS$_3$ and AdS$_2$ magnetic brane solutions within the consistent truncation of AdS$_5 \times S^5$ supergravity. The AdS$_3$ solution extends earlier work by allowing a general embedding of the magnetic $U(1)$ in $SO(6)$. We determine the ratio of strong- and weak-coupling entropies as a function of this embedding. Further, by considering crossed magnetic fields in different $U(1)$'s we are able to construct a solution that runs from AdS$_5$ in the UV to AdS$_2 \times R^3$ in the IR. We find the notable result that there is a zero temperature entropy at strong coupling but not …
We study some aspects of short-distance interaction between parallel D3-branes in type 0 string theory as described by the corresponding world-volume gauge theory. We compute the one-loop effective potential in the non-supersymmetric SU(N) x SU(N) gauge theory (which is a Z_2 projection of the U(2N) n=4 SYM theory) representing dyonic branes composed of N electric and N magnetic D3-branes. The branes of the same type repel at short distances, but an electric and a magnetic brane attract, and the forces between self-dual branes cancel. The self-dual configuration (with the positions of the elec…
We discuss effects of the brane-localized mass terms on the fixed points of the toroidal orbifold $T^2/Z_2$ under the presence of background magnetic fluxes, where multiple lowest and higher-level Kaluza-Klein (KK) modes are realized before introducing the localized masses in general. Through the knowledge of linear algebra, we find that, in each KK level, one of or more than one of the degenerate KK modes are almost inevitably perturbed, when single or multiple brane-localized mass terms are introduced. When the typical scale of the compactification is far above the electroweak scale or the T…
We investigate the contribution of extra dimensions to the muon anomalous magnetic moment by using an ADD-type 6-dimensional model. This approach analyzes the extent of the influence of classical brane fluctuations on the magnetic moment. When we consider that the brane fluctuations are static in time, they add new potential terms to the Schr{ö}dinger equation through the induced vierbein. This paper shows that the brane fluctuation is responsible for the brane-stretching effect. This effect would be capable of reproducing the appropriate order for recent Brookhaven National Laboratory measure…
We consider a magnetic Bianchi I braneworld, embedded in between two Schwarzschild-AdS spacetimes, boosted equal amounts in opposite directions and compare them to the analagous solution in four-dimensional General Relativity. The efficient dissipation of anisotropy on the brane is explicitly demonstrated, a process we dub braneworld isotropization. From the bulk point of view, we attribute this to anisotropic energy being carried into the bulk by hot gravitons leaving the brane. From the brane point of view this can be interpreted in terms of the production of particles in the dual CFT. We ex…
We construct a solution to the low-energy string equations of motion in five dimensions that describes a circular loop of fundamental string exponentially expanding in a background electric $H$-field. Euclideanising this gives an instanton for the creation of a loop of fundamental string in a background $H$-field, and we calculate the rate of nucleation. Solutions describing magnetically charged strings and $p$-branes, where the gauge field comes from Kaluza-Klein reduction on a circle, are also constructed. It is known that a magnetic flux tube in four (reduced) spacetime dimensions is unstab…
A smoking gun signature for a first-order phase transition with negative speed of sound squared $c_s^2$ is the occurrence of a spinodal instability. In the gauge/gravity duality it corresponds to a Gregory-Laflamme type instability, which can be numerically simulated as the evolution of unstable planar black branes. Making use of holography its dynamics is studied far from and near a critical point with the following results. Near a critical point the interface between cold and hot stable phases, given by its width and surface tension, is found to feature a wider phase separation and a smaller…
