We compute the contribution to the conductivity from holographic Fermi surfaces obtained from probe fermions in an AdS charged black hole. This requires calculating a certain part of the one-loop correction to a vector propagator on the charged black hole geometry. We find that the current dissipation is as efficient as possible and the transport lifetime coincides with the single-particle lifetime. In particular, in the case where the spectral density is that of a marginal Fermi liquid, the resistivity is linear in temperature.
This discussion is aimed at identifying physically relevant, albeit lying off the beaten track, gravity models that may provide a holographic description of some prototypical non-Fermi liquid states of strongly correlated condensed matter systems.
We analyse some phenomenological implications of the most general semi-holographic models for non-Fermi liquids that have emerged with inputs from the holographic correspondence. We find generalizations of Landau-Silin equations with few parameters governing thermodynamics, low energy response and collective excitations. We show that even when there is a Fermi surface with well-defined quasi-particle excitations, the collective excitations can behave very differently from Landau's theory.
We study a holographic toy model by considering a probe fermion of finite charge density in an anisotropic background. By computing the fermionic spectral function numerically, we observed that the system exhibits some interesting behaviours in the nature of the Fermi surface (FS) and its evolution when tuning the controlling parameters. We introduced non-minimal interaction terms in the action for holographic fermions along with a complex scalar field but neglecting the backreaction of the fermions field on the background. Suppression in the spectral weight and deformation of FS is observed, …
Holographic properties of a finite density fermion system have been shown to exhibit many interesting behaviours which can be observed in future. In this paper, we study low energy fermion properties in the framework of the holographic Mott-Insulator system. We study the nature of the Fermi surface and its evolution by tuning two types of dipole couplings in the bulk. We further introduce translational symmetry breaking complex scalar field, which is assumed to couple with the holographic fermions. The symmetry breaking background induced by the scalar field is known as Q-lattice. We calculate…
We show that the Luttinger theorem, a robust feature of Fermi liquids, can be violated in non-Fermi liquids. We compute non-Fermi liquid Green functions using duality to black holes and find that the volume of the Fermi surface depends exponentially on the scaling dimension, which is a measure of the coupling. This demonstrates that Luttinger's theorem does not extend to non-Fermi liquids. We comment on possible experimental signatures.
We study fermions in an electrically-probed and asymptotically anti-de Sitter Schwarzschild spacetime which interact via novel chiral symmetry-preserving interactions. Computing the dual fermion two-point correlator, we show that these bulk interactions anisotropically gap Fermi surfaces of the boundary spectrum. Consequently, the interactions we devise provide holographic models for Fermi arcs seen ubiquitously in the pseudogap regime of the cuprates. Our interactions are modifications of the chiral symmetry-breaking Pauli coupling, which has previously been proposed as the holographic realiz…
We show that the universal physics of recent holographic non-Fermi liquid models is captured by a semi-holographic description, in which a dynamical boundary field is coupled to a strongly coupled conformal sector having a gravity dual. This allows various generalizations, such as a dynamical exponent and lattice and impurity effects. We examine possible relevant deformations, including multi-trace terms and spin-orbit effects. We discuss the matching onto the UV theory of the earlier work, and an alternate description in which the boundary field is integrated out.
Quantum anomalies give rise to new non-dissipative transport phenomena in relativistic fluids induced by external electromagnetic fields and vortices. These phenomena can be studied in holographic models with Chern-Simons couplings dual to anomalies in field theory. We perform a computation in AdS/CFT of the anomalous transport coefficients in a holographic massive gravity model, and find that the anomalous conductivities turn out to be independent of the holographic disorder couplings of the model. To arrive at this result we suggest a new definition of the energy-momentum tensor in presence …
We study the fermionic spectral density in a strongly correlated quantum system described by a gravity dual. In the presence of periodically modulated chemical potential, which models the effect of the ionic lattice, we explore the shapes of the corresponding Fermi surfaces, defined by the location of peaks in the spectral density at the Fermi level. We find that at strong lattice potentials sectors of the Fermi surface are unexpectedly destroyed and the Fermi surface becomes an arc-like disconnected manifold. We explain this phenomenon in terms of a collision of the Fermi surface pole with ze…
We study holographic Fermi surfaces coupled to a bosonic degree of freedom using the gauge/gravity correspondence. The gravity background is a charged black hole in asymptotically AdS spacetime. We introduce a neutral scalar field with parameters such that the system is at a quantum phase transition point. We further introduce a Dirac field and couple it to the scalar. At finite N, these fields interact in the bulk. We compute the bulk one-loop contribution to the boundary fermionic self-energies at various quantum phase transition points. The results would give an embedding of the marginal Fe…
We study cold fermionic atoms using the holographic principle. We note that current atomic experiments with massive fermions trapped in a harmonic potential in the unitarity limit behave as massless fermions thanks to the Thomas-Fermi approximation. We map the thermodynamics of strongly correlated massless fermion to that of the charged black hole and study the thermodynamics and transport properties of cold fermions at strong coupling at finite temperature and density. In cold limit, the specific heat of charged black hole is linear in $T$ independent of the dimensionality, which is reminisce…
We show that there is a close correspondence between the physical properties of holographic metals near charged black holes in anti-de Sitter (AdS) space, and the fractionalized Fermi liquid phase of the lattice Anderson model. The latter phase has a "small" Fermi surface of conduction electrons, along with a spin liquid of local moments. This correspondence implies that certain mean-field gapless spin liquids are states of matter at non-zero density realizing the near-horizon, AdS_2 x R^2 physics of Reissner-Nordstrom black holes.
We investigate holographic fermions in uni-directional striped phases, where the breaking of translational invariance can be generated either spontaneously or explicitly. We solve the Dirac equation for a probe fermion in the associated background geometry. When the spatial modulation effect becomes sufficiently strong, we see a spectral weight suppression whenever the Fermi surface is larger than the first Brillouin zone. This leads to the gradual disappearance of the Fermi surface along the symmetry breaking direction, in all of the cases we have examined. This effect appears to be a generic…
Motivated by the results of Dynamical Mean Field Theory, we study the two-point function of fermions moving in a charged black brane background in $AdS_{d+1}$ in the limit of large $d$. We observe the emergence of a locally critical form of the fermion self-energy, with a strongly constrained range of possible scaling behaviors at large $d$. Novelties compared to the analysis in $d=3,4$ include an enlarged regime of temperatures where the results apply, and the analytical tractability of the calculations.
We consider a holographic description of a system of strongly-coupled fermions in 2+1 dimensions based on a D7-brane probe in the background of D3-branes. The black hole embedding represents a Fermi-like liquid. We study the excitations of the Fermi liquid system. Above a critical density which depends on the temperature, the system becomes unstable towards an inhomogeneous modulated phase which is similar to a charge density and spin wave state. The essence of this instability can be effectively described by a Maxwell-axion theory with a background electric field. We also consider the fate of…
Holographic strange metals are known to have a power law resistivity rising with temperature, which is reminiscent of the strange metal phases in condensed matter systems. In some holographic models, however, the exponent of the power law in the resistivity can be negative. In this case one encounters phases with diverging resistivity at zero temperature: holographic strange insulators. These states arise as a result of translational symmetry breaking in the system, which can either be strong explicit and relevant in the IR, or spontaneous, but pinned by a small explicit source. In some regard…
We use holography to compute spectral functions of certain fermionic operators in three different finite-density, zero-temperature states of ABJM theory with a broken U(1) symmetry. In each of the three states, dual to previously studied domain wall solutions of four-dimensional gauged supergravity, we find that the fermionic operators have gapped spectra. In one case the gap can be traced to the small charge of the fermions, while in the other cases it is due to a particular interaction that mixes particles and holes.
We study transport phenomena of total angular momentum in holography, as a first step toward holographic understanding of spin transport phenomena. Spin current, which has both the local Lorentz index for spins and the space-time vector index for current, couples naturally to the bulk spin connection. Therefore the bulk spin connection becomes the source for the boundary spin current. This allows us to evaluate the spin current holographically, with a relation to the stress tensor and metric fluctuations in the bulk. We examine the spin transport coefficients and the thermal spin Hall conducti…
We abstract the essential features of holographic dimer models, and develop several new applications of these models. First, semi-holographically coupling free band fermions to holographic dimers, we uncover novel phase transitions between conventional Fermi liquids and non-Fermi liquids, accompanied by a change in the structure of the Fermi surface. Second, we make dimer vibrations propagate through the whole crystal by way of double trace deformations, obtaining nontrivial band structure. In a simple toy model, the topology of the band structure experiences an interesting reorganization as w…
In this paper, we show universal relations among the transport coefficients by calculating the electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and thermo-electric conductivity in the presence of a chemical potential and magnetic fields for Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion system in arbitrary but even dimensional bulk spacetime as well as for Einstein-DBI-dilaton-axion system in $3+1$ dimensional bulk spacetime. Moreover, we have also obtained a new hyperscale violating black hole solution with finite charge density and magnetic fields but with a trivial dilaton field at IR.
We study the effects of a superconducting condensate on holographic Fermi surfaces. With a suitable coupling between the fermion and the condensate, there are stable quasiparticles with a gap. We find some similarities with the phenomenology of the cuprates: in systems whose normal state is a non-Fermi liquid with no stable quasiparticles, a stable quasiparticle peak appears in the condensed phase.
Zero temperature states of matter are holographically described by a spacetime with an asymptotic electric flux. This flux can be sourced either by explicit charged matter fields in the bulk, by an extremal black hole horizon, or by a combination of the two. We refer to these as mesonic, fully fractionalized and partially fractionalized phases of matter, respectively. By coupling a charged fluid of fermions to an asymptotically AdS_4 Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory, we exhibit quantum phase transitions between all three of these phases. The onset of fractionalization can be either a first orde…
We explore the magnetic properties of the Fermi-like liquid represented by the D3-D7' system. The system exhibits interesting magnetic properties such as ferromagnetism and an anomalous Hall effect, which are due to the Chern-Simons term in the effective gravitational action. We investigate the spectrum of quasi-normal modes in the presence of a magnetic field and show that the magnetic field mitigates the instability towards a striped phase. In addition, we find a critical magnetic field above which the zero sound mode becomes massive.
We study the two-point function for fermionic operators in a class of strongly coupled systems using the gauge-gravity correspondence. The gravity description includes a gauge field and a dilaton which determines the gauge coupling and the potential energy. Extremal black brane solutions in this system typically have vanishing entropy. By analyzing a charged fermion in these extremal black brane backgrounds we calculate the two-point function of the corresponding boundary fermionic operator. We find that in some region of parameter space it is of Fermi liquid type. Outside this region no well-…
In this note, we study the dipole coupling effect of holographic fermion in a charged dilatonic black hole proposed by Gubser and Rocha (arXiv:0911.2898). It is found that the property of Fermi liquid is rigid under perturbation of dipole coupling, and the Fermi momentum is linearly shifted. A gap is dynamically generated as the coupling becomes large enough and the Fermi surface ceases to exist as the bulk dipole coupling further increases.
Strongly interacting Dirac semimetals are investigated using a holographic model especially geared to compute the single-particle correlation function for this case, including both interaction effects and nonzero temperature. We calculate the (homogeneous) electrical conductivity at zero chemical potential, and show that it consists of two contributions. The interband contribution scales as a power law either in frequency or in temperature for low frequency. The precise power is related to a critical exponent of the dual holographic theory, which is a parameter in the model. On top of that we …
We argue that the electron star and the AdS Dirac hair solution are two limits of the free charged Fermi gas in AdS. Spectral functions of holographic duals to probe fermions in the background of electron stars have a free parameter that quantifies the number of constituent fermions that make up the charge and energy density characterizing the electron star solution. The strict electron star limit takes this number to be infinite. The Dirac hair solution is the limit where this number is unity. This is evident in the behavior of the distribution of holographically dual Fermi surfaces. As we de…
We continue our recently proposed holographic description of single-particle correlation functions for four-dimensional chiral fermions with Lifshitz scaling at zero chemical potential, paying particular attention to the dynamical exponent z = 2. We present new results for the spectral densities and dispersion relations at non-zero momenta and temperature. In contrast to the relativistic case with z = 1, we find the existence of a quantum phase transition from a non-Fermi liquid into a Fermi liquid in which two Fermi surfaces spontaneously form, even at zero chemical potential. Our findings sh…
Non-Fermi liquids can be studied using holographic duality. The low energy physics of a holographic Fermi surface is controlled by an emergent scale invariance. After reviewing these developments, we generalize the holographic calculation to include in the bulk action the leading irrelevant operator, which is a dipole coupling between the spinor field and the background gauge field. We find that this dipole coupling changes the attainable low-energy scaling dimensions, and changes the locations of the Fermi surfaces in momentum space. The structure of the holographic framework for non-Fermi li…
In this paper we discuss two-dimensional holographic metals from a condensed matter physics perspective. We examine the spin structure of the Green's function of the holographic metal, demonstrating that the excitations of the holographic metal are "chiral", lacking the inversion symmetry of a conventional Fermi surface, with only one spin orientation for each point on the Fermi surface, aligned parallel to the momentum. While the presence of a Kramer's degeneracy across the Fermi surface permits the formation of a singlet superconductor, it also implies that ferromagnetic spin fluctuations ar…
We study holographic charge transport in (2+1) dimensions at finite $N$, whose dual gravity background is given by perturbative black hole solution in Einstein theory plus cubic terms of Weyl tensor. We consider the higher derivative corrections to the standard Maxwell action, given by the interacting terms between the Weyl tensor and the field strength. We calculate the DC conductivity by using both the membrane paradigm and the Kubo's formula and find precise agreement. We compute the AC conductivity and find an analog of the crossover from `metal' to `bad metal' in the low frequency limit. …
We use holography to study the ground state of a system with interacting bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom at finite density. The gravitational model consists of Einstein-Maxwell gravity coupled to a perfect fluid of charged fermions and to a charged scalar field which interact through a current-current interaction. When the scalar field is non-trivial, in addition to compact electron stars, the screening of the fermion electric charge by the scalar condensate allows the formation of solutions where the fermion fluid is made of antiparticles, as well as solutions with coexisting, separa…
Fermi arcs are disconnected contour of Fermi surface, which can be observed in the pseudo-gap phase of high temperature superconductors. Aiming to understand this pseudo-gap phenomena, we study a holographic Fermionic system coupled with a massive scalar field in an AdS black hole background. Depending on the boundary condition on the scalar field mode, we discuss two possible scenarios. When the scalar condenses below a critical temperature $T_c$, the Fermi surface undergoes a transition from normal phase to pseudo-gap phase. Hence $T_c$ can be the reminiscent of well-known cross over tempera…
We study various thermodynamic and transport properties of a holographic model of a nodal line semimetal (NLSM) at finite temperature, including the quantum phase transition to a topologically trivial phase, with Dirac semimetal-like conductivity. At zero temperature, composite fermion spectral functions obtained from holography are known to exhibit multiple Fermi surfaces. Similarly, for the holographic NLSM we observe multiple nodal lines instead of just one. We show, however, that as the temperature is raised these nodal lines broaden and disappear into the continuum one by one, so there is…
We present an infinite class of 2+1 dimensional field theories which, after coupling to semi-holographic fermions, exhibit strange metallic behavior in a suitable large $N$ limit. These theories describe lattices of hypermultiplet defects interacting with parity-preserving supersymmetric Chern-Simons theories with $U(N) \times U(N)$ gauge groups at levels $\pm k$. They have dual gravitational descriptions in terms of lattices of probe M2 branes in $AdS_4 \times S^7/Z_k$ (for $N \gg 1, N \gg k^5$) or probe D2 branes in $AdS_4 \times CP^3$ (for $N \gg k \gg 1, N \ll k^5$). We discuss several cha…
We construct the holographic renormalization group (RG) flow of thermo-electric conductivities when the translational symmetry is broken. The RG flow is probed by the intrinsic observers hovering on the sliding radial membranes. We obtain the RG flow by solving a matrix-form Riccati equation. The RG flow provides a high-efficient numerical method to calculate the thermo-electric conductivities of strongly coupled systems with momentum dissipation. As an illustration, we recover the AC thermo-electric conductivities in the Einstein-Maxwell-axion model. Moreover, in several homogeneous and isotr…
In this note we calculate susceptibilities, as derivatives of a thermodynamical potential, for the general perturbative holographic set-up for transport with magnetic field, charge density and topological term, and compare with the quantities obtained in the standard $AdS_4$ dyonic black hole analysis of Hartnoll and Kovtun. We find that the results do not match, despite previous expectations.
A holographic model of a quantum critical theory at a finite but low temperature, and finite density is studied. The model exhibits non-relativistic z=2 Schrödinger symmetry and is realized by the Anti-de-Sitter-Schwarzschild black hole in light-cone coordinates. Our approach addresses the electrical conductivities in the presence or absence of an applied magnetic field and contains a control parameter that can be associated to quantum tuning via charge carrier doping or an external field in correlated electron systems. The Ohmic resistivity, the inverse Hall angle, the Hall coefficient and th…
We study the charge transport properties of fields confined to a (2+1)-dimensional defect coupled to (3+1)-dimensional super-Yang-Mills at large-$\nc$ and strong coupling, using AdS/CFT techniques applied to linear response theory. The dual system is described by $\nf$ probe D5- or D7-branes in the gravitational background of $\nc$ black D3-branes. Surprisingly, the transport properties of both defect CFT's are essentially identical -- even though the D7-brane construction breaks all supersymmetries. We find that the system possesses a conduction threshold given by the wave-number of the pertu…
We apply a small magnetic field to strongly interacting matter with a gravity dual description as an electron star. These systems are both metallic and quantum critical at low energies. The resulting quantum oscillations are shown to be of the Kosevich-Lifshitz form characteristic of Fermi liquid theory. It is seen that only fermions at a single radius in the electron star contribute to the oscillations. We proceed to show that the Fermi surface area extracted from the quantum oscillations does not obey the simplest statement of the Luttinger theorem, that is, it is not universally proportiona…
In these lecture notes we review some recent attempts at searching for non-Fermi liquids and novel quantum phase transitions in holographic systems using gauge/gravity duality. We do this by studying the simplest finite density system arising from the duality, obtained by turning on a nonzero chemical potential for a U(1) global symmetry of a CFT, and described on the gravity side by a charged black hole. We address the following questions of such a finite density system: 1. Does the system have a Fermi surface? What are the properties of low energy excitations near the Fermi surface? 2. Does …
We construct a semiholographic effective theory in which the electron of a two-dimensional band hybridizes with a fermionic operator of a critical holographic sector, while also interacting with other bands that preserve quasiparticle characteristics. Besides the scaling dimension $ν$ of the fermionic operator in the holographic sector, the effective theory has two {dimensionless} couplings $α$ and $γ$ determining the holographic and Fermi-liquid-type contributions to the self-energy respectively. We find that irrespective of the choice of the holographic critical sector, there exists a ratio …
The entanglement entropy in theories with a Fermi surface is known to produce a logarithmic violation of the usual area law behavior. We explore the possibility of producing this logarithmic violation holographically by analyzing the IR regions of the bulk geometries dual to such theories. The geometry of Ogawa, Takayanagi, and Ugajin is explored and shown to have a null curvature singularity for all values of parameters, except for dynamical critical exponent 3/2 in four dimensions. The results are extended to general hyperscaling violation exponent. We explore strings propagating through the…
Free fermions form a Fermi surface, which results in non-zero spectral weight at low energy and finite wavevector. In this work, we find similar features in holographic phases dual to strongly coupled quantum superfluid matter. At zero temperature, the phases we consider exhibit semi-local criticality in the IR and all the charge is carried by the scalar condensate outside the black hole horizon. Depending on the value taken by the IR critical exponents, we find Fermi surfaces in the transverse sector, Fermi shells in the longitudinal sector or no spectral weight at all. When there is non-zero…
We describe general features of frequency-dependent charge transport near strongly interacting quantum critical points in 2+1 dimensions. The simplest description using the AdS/CFT correspondence leads to a self-dual Einstein-Maxwell theory on AdS_4, which fixes the conductivity at a frequency-independent self-dual value. We describe the general structure of higher-derivative corrections to the Einstein-Maxwell theory, and compute their implications for the frequency dependence of the quantum-critical conductivity. We show that physical consistency conditions on the higher-derivative terms all…
Semi-holographic models of non-Fermi liquids have been shown to have generically stable generalised quasi-particles on the Fermi surface. Although these excitations are broad and exhibit particle-hole asymmetry, they were argued to be stable from interactions at the Fermi surface. In this work, we use this observation to compute the density response and collective behaviour in these systems. Compared to the Fermi liquid case, we find that the boundaries of the particle-hole continuum are blurred by incoherent contributions. However, there is a region inside this continuum, that we call inner c…
Robustness of the Luttinger theorem for fermionic liquids is examined in holography. The statement of the Luttinger theorem, the equality between the fermion charge density and the volume enclosed by the Fermi surface, can be mapped to a Gauss's law in the gravity dual, a la Sachdev. We show that various deformations in the gravity dual, such as inclusion of magnetic fields, a parity-violating theta-term, dilatonic deformations, and higher-derivative corrections, do not violate the holographic derivation of the Luttinger theorem, as long as the theory is in a confining phase. Therefore a robus…
Recently, a mechanism for the development of a fermi surface in a holographic model of large N QCD with a baryon chemical potential was proposed. We examine similar constructions to determine when this mechanism persists. We find a class of models in which it does.
We study the holographic dual of a finite density system with both bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom. There is no evidence for a universal bose-dominated ground state. Instead, depending on the relative conformal weights the preferred groundstate is either pure AdS-Reissner-Nordstrom, a holographic superconductor, an electron star, or a novel mixed state that is best characterized as a hairy electron star.
We argue that Landau-Fermi liquids do not have any gravity duals in the purely classical limit. We employ the logarithmic behavior of entanglement entropy to characterize the existence of Fermi surfaces. By imposing the null energy condition, we show that the specific heat always behaves anomalously. We also present a classical gravity dual which has the expected behavior of the entanglement entropy and specific heat for non-Fermi liquids.
We systematically present a new approach for studying the coupled linear transport of holographic systems. In this approach, the set of equations for the linear perturbations can be reduced to a first-order nonlinear ordinary differential equation expressed as the radial (renormalization group) flow equation of the transport matrices. As an important application, we use this approach to compute the DC and AC conductivities of a holographic model with momentum dissipation, which can be easily read off from the nonlinear flow equations. This method also works for transport in the presence of an …
We study the thermoelectric transport under shear strain in two spatial dimensional quantum matter using the holographic duality. General analytic formulae for the DC thermoelectric conductivities subjected to finite shear strain are obtained in terms of the black hole horizon data. Off-diagonal terms in the conductivity matrix appear also at zero magnetic field, resembling an emergent electronic nematicity which cannot nevertheless be identified with the presence of an anomalous Hall effect. For an explicit model study, we numerically construct a family of strained black holes and obtain the …
We study the interface between a fractional topological insulator and an ordinary insulator, both described using holography. By turning on a chemical potential we induce a finite density of matter localized at the interface. These are gapless surface excitations which are expected to have a fermionic character. We study the thermodynamics of the system, finding a symmetry preserving compressible state at low temperatures, whose excitations exhibit hyperscaling violation. These results are consistent with the expectation of gapless fermionic excitations forming a Fermi surface at finite densit…
We study the holographic flow of anomalous conductivities induced by gauge and gravitational Chern-Simons terms. We find that the contribution from the gauge Chern-Simons term gives rise to a flow that can be interpreted in terms of an effective, cutoff dependent chemical potential. In contrast the contribution of the gauge-gravitational Chern-Simons term is just the temperature squared and does not flow.
Based on the gauge/gravity correspondence we have calculated the thermoelectric kinetic and transport characteristics of the strongly interacting materials in the presence of perpendicular magnetic field. The 3+1 dimensional system with Dirac-like spectrum is considered as a strongly interacting one if it is close to the particle-hole symmetry point. Transport in such system has been modeled by the two interacting vector fields. In the holographic theory the momentum relaxation is caused by axion field and leads to finite values of the direct current transport coefficients. We have calculated …
We discuss fermions in a spontaneously generated holographic lattice background. The lattice structure at the boundary is generated by introducing a higher-derivative interaction term between a U(1) gauge field and a scalar field. We solve the equations of motion below the critical temperature at which the lattice forms, and analyze the change in the Fermi surface due to the lattice. The fermion band structure is found to exhibit a band gap due to lattice effects.
We study fermion correlators in a holographic superfluid with a d-wave (spin two) order parameter. We find that, with a suitable bulk Majorana coupling, the Fermi surface is anisotropically gapped. At low temperatures the gap shrinks to four nodal points. At high temperatures the Fermi surface is partially gapped generating four Fermi arcs.
