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 reconsider the holographic model featuring a superconducting dome on the temperature-doping phase diagram with a modified view on the role of the two charges. The first type charge with density $ρ_{A}$ make the Mott insulator, and the second one with $ρ_{B}$ is the extra charge by doping, so that the complex scalar describing the cooper pair condensation couples only with the second charge. We point out that the key role in creating the dome is played by the three point interaction $-c χ^{2} F_{μν}G^{μν}$. The $Tc$ increases with their coupling. We also consider the effect of the quantum cr…
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…
The density response of charged liquids contains a collective excitation known as the plasmon. In holographic systems with translational invariance the origin of this collective excitation is traced back to the presence of zero-sound. Using a holographic model in which translational symmetry is broken pseudo-spontaneously, we show the density response is not dominated by a single isolated mode at low momentum and temperature. As a consequence, the density response contains a broad asymmetric peak with an attenuation which does not increase monotonically with momentum and temperature.
It is presently unknown how strong lattice potentials influence the fermion spectral function of the holographic strange metals predicted by the AdS/CFT correspondence. This embodies a crucial test for the application of holography to condensed matter experiments. We show that for one particular momentum direction this spectrum can be computed for arbitrary strength of the effective translational symmetry breaking potential of the so-called Bianchi-VII geometry employing ordinary differential equations. Deep in the strange metal regime we find rather small changes to the single-fermion respons…
We revisit HHH model in [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 101}, 031601 (2008)] and extend the ansatz of matter fields to being of depending on a spatial dimension except the holographic direction. Despite homogeneous solutions of ground and excited states, especially for the excited states, there also exists solutions where the translational invariance is broken. It is worth mentioning that no periodic sources are assigned to the matter fields, so the translational symmetry is broken spontaneously. We investigate how the new solutions and the condensates of excited states develop with the change of tempe…
In a holographic probe-brane model exhibiting a spontaneously spatially modulated ground state, we introduce explicit sources of symmetry breaking in the form of ionic and antiferromagnetic lattices. For the first time in a holographic model, we demonstrate pinning, in which the translational Goldstone mode is lifted by the introduction of explicit sources of translational symmetry breaking. The numerically computed optical conductivity fits very well to a Drude-Lorentz model with a small residual metallicity, precisely matching analytic formulas for the DC conductivity. We also find an instab…
We study how to engineer holographic models with features of a high temperature superconductor phase diagram. We introduce a field in the bulk which provides a tunable "doping" parameter in the boundary theory. By designing how this field changes the effective masses of other order parameter fields, desired phase diagrams can be engineered. We give examples of generating phase diagrams with phase boundaries similar to a superconducting dome and an anti-ferromagnetic phase by including two order parameter fields. We also explore whether the pseudo gap phase can be described without adding anoth…
We add the magnetic field axis to the holographic model for a doped superconductor proposed by Kiritsis and Li. We explore the resulting superconducting dome, in a particular region of parameters in which the equations for the superconductor can be mapped into the previously known undoped case.
We present a class of holographic massive gravity models that realize a spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry - they exhibit transverse phonon modes whose speed relates to the elastic shear modulus according to elasticity theory. Massive gravity theories thus emerge as versatile and convenient theories to model generic types of translational symmetry breaking: explicit, spontaneous and a mixture of both. The nature of the breaking is encoded in the radial dependence of the graviton mass. As an application of the model, we compute the temperature dependence of the shear modulus and fin…
It has been shown that holographic massive gravities can effectively realize the states with spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry in a homogenous manner. In this work, we consider a toy model of such category by adding a special gauge-axion coupling to the bulk action. Firstly, we identify the existence of spontaneous breaking of translations by the UV analysis. In the absence of explicit breaking, the black hole solution is simply the same as the Reissner-Nodstrom(RN) black holes, regardless of the non-trivial profile of the bulk axions. The associated Goldstone modes exist only whe…
In this paper we investigate the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density, $η/s$, in hyperscaling violating geometry with lattice structure. We show that the scaling relation with hyperscaling violation gives a strong constraint to the mass of graviton and usually leads to a power law of temperature, $η/s\sim T^κ$. We find the exponent $κ$ can be greater than two such that the new bound for viscosity raised in arXiv:1601.02757 is violated. Our above observation is testified by constructing specific solutions with UV completion in various holographic models. Finally, we compare the boundedne…
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…
In this paper, we show that a simple generalization of the holographic axion model can realize spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry by considering a special gauge-axion higher derivative term. The finite real part and imaginary part of the stress tensor imply that the dual boundary system is a viscoelastic solid. By calculating quasi-normal modes and making a comparison with predictions from the elasticity theory, we verify the existence of phonons and pseudo-phonons, where the latter is realized by introducing a weak explicit breaking of translational symmetry, in the transverse cha…
We study the lattice effects on the simple holographic toy model; massive U(1) gauge theory for the bulk action. The mass term is for the U(1) gauge symmetry breaking in the bulk. Without the lattice, the AC conductivity of this model shows similar results to the holographic superconductor with the energy gap. On this model, we introduce the lattice effects, which induce the periodic potential and break the translational invariance of the boundary field theory. Without the lattice, due to the translational invariance and the mass term, there is a delta function peak at zero frequency on the AC…
We study the shear viscosity in an effective hydrodynamic theory and holographic model where the translational symmetry is broken by massless scalar fields. We identify the shear viscosity, $η$, from the coefficient of the shear tensor in the modified constitutive relation, constructed from thermodynamic quantities, fluid velocity and the scalar fields, which break the translational symmetry explicitly. Our construction of constitutive relation is inspired by those derived from the fluid/gravity correspondence in the weakly disordered limit $m/T \ll 1$. We show that the shear viscosity from th…
Holographic heavy quark potential, free energy, and running coupling in backgrounds with broken translational symmetry: Separating finite density from momentum relaxation
School of Mathematics and Physics, China University of Geosciences(中国地质大学数学与物理学院)
We propose massive gravity as a holographic framework for describing a class of strongly interacting quantum field theories with broken translational symmetry. Bulk gravitons are assumed to have a Lorentz-breaking mass term as a substitute for spatial inhomogeneities. This breaks momentum-conservation in the boundary field theory. At finite chemical potential, the gravity duals are charged black holes in asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetime. The conductivity in these systems generally exhibits a Drude peak that approaches a delta function in the massless gravity limit. Furthermore, the opti…
We analyze fermionic response of strongly correlated holographic matter in presence of inhomogeneous periodically modulated potential mimicking the crystal lattice. The modulation is sourced by a scalar operator that explicitly breaks the translational symmetry in one direction. We compute the fermion spectral function and show that it either exhibits a well defined Fermi surface with umklapp gaps opening on the Brillouin zone boundary at small lattice wave vector, or, when the wave vector is large, the Fermi surface is anisotropically deformed and the quasiparticles get significantly broadene…
We analyze the concomitant spontaneous breaking of translation and conformal symmetries by introducing in a CFT a complex scalar operator that acquires a spatially dependent expectation value. The model, inspired by the holographic Q-lattice, provides a privileged setup to study the emergence of phonons from a spontaneous translational symmetry breaking in a conformal field theory and offers valuable hints for the treatment of phonons in QFT at large. We first analyze the Ward identity structure by means of standard QFT techniques, considering both spontaneous and explicit symmetry breaking. N…
We present a minimal bottom-up extension of the Chern-Simons bulk action for holographic translational symmetry breaking that naturally gives rise to pair density waves. We construct stationary inhomogeneous black hole solutions in which both the U(1) symmetry and spatially translational symmetry are spontaneously broken at finite temperature and charge density. This novel solution provides a dual description of a superconducting phase intertwined with charge, current and parity orders.
Bianchi black branes (black brane solutions with homogeneous but anisotropic horizons classified by the Bianchi type) provide a simple holographic setting with lattice structures taken into account. In the case of holographic superconductor, we have a persistent current with lattices. Accordingly, we expect that in the dual gravity side, a black brane should carry some momentum along a direction of lattice structure, where translational invariance is broken. Motivated by this expectation, we consider whether---and if possible, in what circumstances---a Bianchi black brane can have momentum alo…
We provide a complete and unified description of translational symmetry breaking in a simple holographic model. In particular, we focus on the distinction and the interplay between explicit and spontaneous breaking. We consider a class of holographic massive gravity models which allow to range continuously from one situation to the other. We study the collective degrees of freedom, the electric AC conductivity and the shear correlator in function of the explicit and spontaneous scales. We show the possibility of having a sound-to-diffusion crossover for the transverse phonons. Within our model…
In this note we study the effects of a magnetic field on transport using holographic models with broken translational invariance. We show that, after carefully subtracting off non-trivial magnetisation currents, it is possible to express the DC transport currents of the boundary theory in terms of properties of a black hole horizon. This allows us to obtain simple analytic expressions for the electrical, thermoelectric and heat conductivity tensors. Our results apply to both isotropic and anisotropic models, including holographic Q-lattices and to certain theories where translational invarianc…
We consider the spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry and identify the associated Goldstone mode -- a longitudinal phonon -- in a holographic model with Bianchi VII helical symmetry. For the first time in holography, we observe the pinning of this mode after introducing a source for explicit breaking compatible with the helical symmetry of our setup. We study the dispersion relation of the resulting pseudo-Goldstone mode, uncovering how its speed and mass gap depend on the amplitude of the source and temperature. In addition, we extract the optical conductivity as a function of freque…
In this letter we study the Hall conductivity in holographic models where translational invariance is broken by a lattice. We show that generic holographic theories will display a different temperature dependence in the Hall angle as to the DC conductivity. Our results suggest a general mechanism for obtaining an anomalous scaling of the Hall angle in strongly interacting quantum critical systems.
We study the dynamics and the relaxation of bulk plasmons in strongly coupled and quantum critical systems using the holographic framework. We analyze the dispersion relation of the plasmonic modes in detail for an illustrative class of holographic bottom-up models. Comparing to a simple hydrodynamic formula, we entangle the complicated interplay between the three least damped modes and shed light on the underlying physical processes. Such as the dependence of the plasma frequency and the effective relaxation time in terms of the electromagnetic coupling, the charge and the temperature of the …
In this work, we uncover a universal relaxation mechanism of pinned density waves, combining Gauge/Gravity duality and effective field theory techniques. Upon breaking translations spontaneously, new gapless collective modes emerge, the Nambu-Goldstone bosons of broken translations. When translations are also weakly broken (eg by disorder or lattice effects), these phonons are pinned with a mass $m$ and damped at a rate $Ω$, which we explicitly compute. This contribution to $Ω$ is distinct from that of topological defects. We show that $Ω\simeq G m^2Ξ$, where $G$ is the shear modulus and $Ξ$ i…
Holographic low-energy spectral weight at zero temperature and finite momenta indicates the presence of a strongly coupled remnant of Pauli exclusion. Building upon previous work, we study the spectral weight of a bottom-up holographic superfluid model with spontaneously broken translational symmetry. We determine the effect of this symmetry breaking on the previously known attributes of the holographic superconductor spectral weight: 1) an instability at finite momenta and 2) the presence of nested Fermi surfaces (sometimes called Fermi shells). We find that the symmetry breaking seems to str…
We discuss the DC conductivity of holographic theories with translational invariance broken by a background lattice. We show that the presence of the lattice induces an effective mass for the graviton via a gravitational version of the Higgs mechanism. This allows us to obtain, at leading order in the lattice strength, an analytic expression for the DC conductivity in terms of the size of the lattice at the horizon. In locally critical theories this leads to a power law resistivity that is in agreement with an earlier field theory analysis of Hartnoll and Hofman.
This is a complete and exhaustive review on the so-called holographic axion model -- a bottom-up holographic system characterized by the presence of a set of shift symmetric scalar bulk fields whose profiles are taken to be linear in the spatial coordinates. This simple model implements the breaking of translational invariance of the dual field theory by retaining the homogeneity of the background geometry and therefore allowing for controllable and fast computations. The usages of this model are very vast and they are a proof of the spectacular versatility of the framework. In this review, we…
A supersolid is a system that presents long-range order and shear rigidity as a solid but which also supports a non-dissipative superflow as a superfluid. From an effective perspective, supersolids are identified with phases of matter that break spontaneously translational invariance together with a global $U(1)$ symmetry. By using this symmetry prescription, we build a holographic bottom-up model for supersolids and we start the investigation of its thermodynamic and mechanical properties. More precisely, we analyze the behaviour of the critical temperature, the condensate, the shear modulus …
We consider a persistent superconductor current along the direction with no translational symmetry in a holographic gravity model. Incorporating a lattice structure into the model, we numerically construct novel solutions of hairy charged stationary black brane with momentum/rotation along the latticed direction. The lattice structure prevents the horizon from rotating, and the total momentum is only carried by matter fields outside the black brane horizon. This is consistent with the black hole rigidity theorem, and suggests that in dual field theory with lattices, superconductor currents are…
Large-N_c QCD matter at intermediate baryon density and low temperatures has been conjectured to be in the so-called quarkyonic phase, i.e., to have a quark Fermi surface and on top of it a confined spectrum of excitations. It has been suggested that the presence of the quark Fermi surface leads to a homogeneous phase with restored chiral symmetry, which is unstable towards creating condensates breaking both the chiral and translational symmetry. Motivated by these exotic features, we investigate properties of cold baryonic matter in the single flavor Sakai-Sugimoto model searching for a holog…
Starting with the holographic p-wave superconductor, we show how to obtain a finite DC conductivity through a non-abelian gauge transformation. The translational symmetry is preserved. We obtain phenomenological similarities with high temperature cuprate superconductors. Our results suggest that a lattice or impurities are not essential to produce a finite DC resistivity with a linear temperature dependence. An analogous field theory calculation for free fermions, presented in the appendix, indicates our results may be a special feature of strong interactions.
Implementing the Wilsonian renormalization group (RG) transformation in a nonperturbative way, we construct an effective holographic dual description with an emergent extradimension identified with an RG scale. Taking the large$-N$ limit, we obtain an equation of motion of an order-parameter field, here the chiral condensate for our explicit demonstration. In particular, an intertwined structure manifests between the first-order RG flow equations of renormalized coupling functions and the second-order differential equation of the order-parameter field, thus referred to as a nonperturbative RG-…
The relationship between thermodynamics and the Lloyd bound on the holographic complexity for a black hole has been of interest. We consider $D$ dimensional anti-de Sitter black holes with hyperbolic geometry as well as black holes with momentum relaxation that have a minimum for temperature and mass. We show that the singular points of the thermodynamic curvature of the black holes, as thermodynamic systems, correspond to the zero points of the action and volume complexity at the Lloyd bound. For such black holes with a single horizon, the complexity of volume and the complexity of action at …
We study the elastic response of planar black hole (BH) solutions in a simple class of holographic models with broken translational invariance. We compute the transverse quasi-normal mode spectrum and the propagation speed of the lowest energy mode. We find that the speed of the lowest mode relates to the BH rigidity modulus as dictated by elasticity theory. This allows to identify these modes as transverse phonons---the pseudo Goldstone bosons of spontaneously broken translational invariance. In addition, we show that these modes have a mass gap controlled by an explicit source of the transla…
We present a holographic theory in AdS_4 whose zero temperature ground state develops a crystal structure, spontaneously breaking translational symmetry. The crystal is induced by a background magnetic field, but requires no chemical potential. This lattice arises from the existence of 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole solitons in the bulk which condense to form a classical object known as a monopole wall. In the infra-red, the magnetic field is screened and there is an emergent SU(2) global symmetry.
Hydrodynamics is a theory of long-range excitations controlled by equations of motion that encode the conservation of a set of currents (energy, momentum, charge, etc.) associated with explicitly realized global symmetries. If a system possesses additional weakly broken symmetries, the low-energy hydrodynamic degrees of freedom also couple to a few other "approximately conserved" quantities with parametrically long relaxation times. It is often useful to consider such approximately conserved operators and corresponding new massive modes within the low-energy effective theory, which we refer to…
We argue, at a very basic effective field theory level, that higher dimension operators in scalar theories that break symmetries at scales close to their ultraviolet completion cutoff, include terms that favour the breaking of translation (Lorentz) invariance, potentially resulting in striped, chequered board or general crystal-like phases. Such descriptions can be thought of as the effective low energy description of QCD-like gauge theories near their strong coupling scale where terms involving higher dimension operators are generated. Our low energy theory consists of scalar fields describin…
We investigate the low-energy dynamics of systems with pseudo-spontaneously broken $U(1)$ symmetry and Goldstone phase relaxation. We construct a hydrodynamic framework which is able to capture these, in principle independent, effects. We consider two generalisations of the standard holographic superfluid model by adding an explicit breaking of the $U(1)$ symmetry by either sourcing the charged bulk scalar or by introducing an explicit mass term for the bulk gauge field. We find agreement between the hydrodynamic dispersion relations and the quasi-normal modes of both holographic models. We ve…
We consider thermal phases of holographic lattices at finite chemical potential in which a continuous internal bulk symmetry can be spontaneously broken. In the normal phase, translational symmetry is explicitly broken by the lattice and the only conserved quantities are related to time translations and the electric charge. The long wavelength excitations of the corresponding charge densities are described by incoherent hydrodynamics yielding two perturbative modes which are diffusive. In the broken phase an additional hydrodynamic degree of freedom couples to the local chemical potential and …
Momentum relaxation can be built into many holographic models without sacrificing homogeneity of the bulk solution. In this paper we study two such models: one in which translational invariance is broken in the dual theory by spatially-dependent sources for massless scalar fields and another that features an additional neutral scalar field. We turn on a charged scalar field in order to explore the condensation of a charged scalar operator in the dual theories. After demonstrating that the relaxed superconductors we construct are thermodynamically relevant, we find that the finite DC electrical…
We investigate the Drude weight and the related Mazur-Suzuki (MS) bound in a broad variety of strongly coupled field theories with a gravity dual at finite temperature and chemical potential. We revisit the derivation of the recently proposed universal expression for the Drude weight for Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton (EMd) theories and extend it to the case of theories with multiple massless gauge fields. We show that the MS bound, which in the context of condensed matter provides information on the integrability of the theory, is saturated in these holographic theories including R-charged backgrou…