In this paper, we study the holography of quasi-topological gravity in several aspects. We redo the calculation of shear viscosity on the boundary CFT with a new method which is associated with conserved Noether current and show that it has only one mode explicitly. Then we study the butterfly effect in AdS planar black hole and find it has two butterfly velocity modes because of the quasi-topological term. We obtain new black hole solution through introducing matter fields. We calculate the thermoelectric DC conductivity with momentum dissipation in quasi-topological gravity and find its results are the same with those of Einstein and Gauss-Bonnet gravities. These results show us explicit similarities and differences between quasi-topological term and actual topological term in the context of holography.
We review recent work on holographic aspects of electric-magnetic dualities in theories that involve conformally coupled scalars and abelian gauge fields in asymptotically AdS4 spaces. Such models are relevant for the holographic description of M-theory. We also briefly comment on some new results on the holographic properties of generalized electric-magnetic duality in gravity.
We use the Chern-Simons formulation of higher spin theories in three dimensions to study aspects of holographic W-gravity. Concepts which were useful in studies of pure bulk gravity theories, such as the Fefferman-Graham gauge and the residual gauge transformations, which induce Weyl transformations in the boundary theory and their higher spin generalizations, are reformulated in the Chern-Simons language. Flat connections that correspond to conformal and lightcone gauges in the boundary theory are considered.
We study certain features of a strongly coupled theory whose gravitational dual is given by two-charge dilatonic black hole in AdS5 which has recently been used to study holographic Fermi liquids. By making use of the gravity description, we have studied conductivity, holographic entanglement entropy and dynamics of a charged scalar field. In particular at low energy we find that the temperature dependence of the real part of the conductivity goes as T^3 and the background is stable against scalar condensations.
We consider universal aspects of a holographic Schwinger effect in general backgrounds with an external homogeneous electric field. The argument is based on the potential analysis developed in our previous work. Under some conditions, there always exists a critical electric field, above which the potential barrier vanishes and the system becomes unstable catastrophically. The critical value agrees with the one obtained from the Dirac-Born-Infeld action. For general confining backgrounds, we show that the Schwinger effect does not occur when the electric field is weaker than the confining strin…
We study a general D-dimensional Schwarzschild-type black brane solution of the Einstein-dilaton theory and derive, by using the holographic renormalization, its thermodynamics consistent with the geometric results. Using the membrane paradigm, we calculate the several hydrodynamic transport coefficients and compare them with the results obtained by the Kubo formula, which shows the self-consistency of the gauge/gravity duality in the relativistic non-conformal theory. In order to understand more about the relativistic non-conformal theory, we further investigate the binding energy, drag force…
In earlier work the evolution operator for the exact RG equation was mapped to a field theory in Euclidean AdS. This gives a simple way of understanding AdS/CFT. We explore aspects of this map by studying a simple example of a Schroedinger equation for a free particle with time dependent mass. This is an analytic continuation of an ERG like equation. We show for instance that it can be mapped to a harmonic oscillator. We show that the same techniques can lead to an understanding of dS/CFT too.
In the framework of six-dimensional conformal field theories with ${\cal N}=(1,0)$ supersymmetry we develop the map between the holographic description, the field theoretical description and the associated Hanany-Witten set-ups. General expressions that calculate various observables are presented. The study of string solitons singles out a special background of Massive IIA on which we show (by explicitly finding a Lax pair) that the Neveu-Schwarz part of the string sigma model is classically integrable. We study the particular dual conformal field theory and compute some of its observables.
We study the holographic description of ${\cal N}=2$ Super Conformal Field Theories in four dimensions first given by Gaiotto and Maldacena. We present new expressions that holographically calculate characteristic numbers of the CFT and associated Hanany-Witten set-ups, or more dynamical observables, like the central charge. A number of examples of varying complexity are studied and some proofs for these new expressions are presented. We repeat this treatment for the case of the marginally deformed Gaiotto-Maldacena theories, presenting an infinite family of new solutions and compute some of i…
The content of this paper includes studying holographical and thermodynamical aspects of dyonic black holes in the presence of massive gravity. For the first part of paper, thermodynamical properties of the bulk which includes black holes are studied and the main focus is on critical behavior. It will be shown that the existence of massive gravitons introduces remnant for temperature after evaporation of black holes, van der Waals phase transition for non-spherical black holes and etc. The consistency of different thermodynamical approaches toward critical behavior of the black holes is presen…
We study the effects of an external magnetic field on the properties of the quasiparticle spectrum of the class of 2+1 dimensional strongly coupled theories holographically dual to charged AdS$_4$ black holes at zero temperature. We uncover several interesting features. At certain values of the magnetic field, there are multiple quasiparticle peaks representing a novel level structure of the associated Fermi surfaces. Furthermore, increasing magnetic field deforms the dispersion characteristics of the quasiparticle peaks from non-Landau toward Landau behaviour. At a certain value of the magnet…
We construct a holographic p-wave superconductor model in the framework of quasi-topological gravity in the probe limit. The relation between the critical temperature and the coupling parameters of higher curvature terms is investigated. The numerical results for conductivity are presented as well. It turns out that our data fits the Drude model very well in the low frequency limit, and the values of DC conductivity as well as the relaxation time are obtained numerically.
In this thesis we explore general aspects of the entanglement entropy (EE) for Conformal Field Theories (CFTs) dual to Cubic Curvature Gravity. We derived a covariant expression for the EE by using a scheme inherited from the bulk renormalization method through extrinsic counterterms. We evaluate this functional in different entangling regions to calculate CFT data. In particular, we compute the $t_4$ coefficient of the 3-point function of the stress-tensor correlator by considering a deformed entangling region. We observe that there is a discrepancy between the outcomes attained through the e…
We investigate the holographic renormalization of the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory which provides an asymptotic Lifshitz geometry dual to a Lifshitz field theory. In this case, the existence of a field combination with zero scaling dimension causes an ambiguity in fixing local counter terms. Nevertheless, we show that all possible local counter terms give rise to consistent thermodynamic quantities with the Lifshitz black brane results. In addition, we also study the retarded Green functions of the current and momentum operator of a non-relativistic Lifshitz field theory. In the non-zero mo…
Black holes in anti-de Sitter (AdS) backgrounds play a pivotal role in the gauge/gravity duality where they determine, among other things, the approach to equilibrium of the dual field theory. We undertake a detailed analysis of perturbed Kerr-AdS black holes in four- and five-dimensional spacetimes, including the computation of its quasinormal modes, hydrodynamic modes and superradiantly unstable modes. Our results shed light on the possibility of new black hole phases with a single Killing field, possible new holographic phenomena and phases in the presence of a rotating chemical potential, …
We study thermodynamics of flat space/boson star systems enclosed in a scalar reflecting box with St$\ddot{u}$ckelberg mechanism. We also disclose effects of model parameters on transitions and the properties appear to be qualitatively the same as those in holographic St$\ddot{u}$ckelberg transitions. Moreover, we obtain a relation $\barζ\thickapprox 2 \tildeζ$ and the second order characteristic exponent, which also hold in holographic superconductor theories. The similarity between quasi-local thermodynamic transitions and holographic transitions provides additional evidences that holographi…
We provide a framework for calculating holographic Green's functions from general bilinear actions and fields obeying coupled differential equations in the bulk. The matrix-valued spectral function is shown to be independent of the radial bulk coordinate. Applying this framework we improve the analysis of fluctuations in the D3/D7 system at finite baryon density, where the longitudinal perturbations of the world-volume gauge field couple to the scalar fluctuations of the brane embedding. We compute the spectral function and show how its properties are related to the quasinormal mode spectrum. …
A holographic model for QCD is employed to investigate the effects of the gluon condensate on the spectrum and melting of scalar mesons. We find the evolution of the free energy density with the temperature, and the result shows that the temperature of the confinement/deconfinement transition is sensitive to the gluon-condensate parameter. The spectral functions (SPFs) are also obtained and show a series of peaks in the low-temperature regime, indicating the presence of quasiparticle states associated to the mesons, while the number of peaks decreases with the increment of the temperature, cha…
In this note, we explore holographic attributes of four-dimensional near-extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black hole solutions in ungauged ${\cal N}=2$ supergravity theories at the two-derivative level by recasting them as a specific first-order deformation in solution space, associated with an infinitesimal Harrison transformation, of black holes in an $AdS_2$ space-time. Specifically, we use this link to exhibit how bulk properties, such as mass and entropy, of four-dimensional near-extremal black holes are holographically encoded in the one-dimensional boundary theory dual to gravity in an infin…
In this letter we study aspects of the holographic superconductors analytically in the presence of a constant external magnetic field. We show that the critical temperature and critical magnetic field can be calculated at nonzero temperature. We detect the Meissner effect in such superconductors. A universal relation between black hole mass $ M$ and critical magnetic field $H_c$ is proposed as $\frac{H_c}{M^{2/3}}\leq 0.687365$. We discuss some aspects of phase transition in terms of black hole entropy and the Bekenstein's entropy to energy upper bound.
In this paper we consider aspects of the holographic interpretation of Taub-NUT-AdS$_4$. We review our earlier results which show that TNAdS$_4$ gives rise to a holographic three-dimensional conformal fluid having constant vorticity. We then study the holographic relevance of the Misner string by considering bulk scalar fluctuations. The scalar fluctuations organize naturally into representations of the $SU(2)\times \mathbb{R}$ isometry algebra. If we require the string's invisibility we obtain a Dirac-like quantization relating the frequency of the scalar field modes to the NUT charge. As the…
We study the holographic dual of a massive gravity with Gauss-Bonnet and cubic quasi-topological higher curvature terms. Firstly, we find the energy-momentum two-point function of the 4-dimensional boundary theory where the massive term breaks the conformal symmetry as expected. An $a$-theorem is introduced based on the null energy condition. Then we focus on a black brane solution in this background and derive the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density for the dual theory. It is worth mentioning that the concept of viscosity as a transport coefficient is obscure in a nontranslational inv…
In this paper we derive holographic wave equations for hadrons with arbitrary spin starting from an effective action in a higher-dimensional space asymptotic to anti-de Sitter (AdS) space. Our procedure takes advantage of the local tangent frame, and it applies to all spins, including half-integer spins. An essential element is the mapping of the higher-dimensional equations of motion to the light-front Hamiltonian, thus allowing a clear distinction between the kinematical and dynamical aspects of the holographic approach to hadron physics. Accordingly, the non-trivial geometry of pure AdS spa…
We calculate frequency space holographic correlators in an asymptotically AdS crunching background, dual to a relevant deformation of the M2-brane CFT placed in de Sitter spacetime. For massless bulk scalars, exploiting the connection to a solvable supersymmetric quantum mechanical problem, we obtain the exact frequency space correlator for the dual operator in the deformed CFT. Controlling the shape of the crunching surface in the Penrose diagram by smoothly dialling the deformation from zero to infinity, we observe that in the large deformation limit the Penrose diagram becomes a `square', a…
We present and study a 4d Chern-Simons (CS) model whose gauge symmetry is encoded in a balanced Lie group crossed module. Using the derived formal set-up recently found, the model can be formulated in a way that in many respects closely parallels that of the familiar 3d CS one. In spite of these formal resemblance, the gauge invariance properties of the 4d CS model differ considerably. The 4d CS action is fully gauge invariant if the underlying base 4fold has no boundary. When it does, the action is gauge variant, the gauge variation being a boundary term. If certain boundary conditions are im…
We show that in field theories with a holographic dual the retarded Green's function of a conserved current can be represented as a convergent sum over the quasinormal modes. We find that the zero-frequency conductivity is related to the sum over quasinormal modes and their high-frequency asymptotics via a sum rule. We derive the asymptotics of the quasinormal mode frequencies and their residues using the phase-integral (WKB) approach and provide analytic insight into the existing numerical observations concerning the asymptotic behavior of the spectral densities.
We study two aspects of 3D QCD with massless fermions in a holographic set-up from string theory, based on D3/D7 branes; parity anomaly and baryons as baby Skyrmions. We first give a novel account of parity anomaly of 3D QCD with odd number of flavors from the IR holographic viewpoint by observing a subtle point in D7 brane embeddings with a given fixed UV theory. We also discuss its UV origin in terms of weakly coupled D-brane pictures. We then focus on the parity-symmetric case of even number of N_F flavors, and study baryons in the holographic model. We identify the monopoles of U(N_F) gaug…
We study fluctuations of a U(1) gauge field on the worldvolume of Nf probe D7-branes in the background of Nc black D3-branes with a finite baryon density. The choice of mode corresponds to vector mesons in the dual gauge theory whose mass and lifetime can be determined by a study of the quasinormal modes. The speed of propagation of these holographic mesons at large momenta is studied from the dispersion relations of the quasinormal modes of the system.
This thesis is dedicated to the holographic study of flavor dynamics. The technique employed is a D7-brane probing of various D3-brane backgrounds. The first topic covered studies the influence of an external magnetic field on a flavored large N Yang-Mills theory. The theory exhibits spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. The meson spectrum exhibits Zeeman splitting and characteristic GMOR relation. The second topic examines thermal properties of the dual gauge theory. The third topic studies the phase structure of the finite temperature dual gauge theory in the presence of magnetic field. A ph…
We study the partial entanglement entropy (PEE) aspects of the holographic BCFT setup with an entanglement island, inspired by the holographic triality of the AdS/BCFT setup developed in the recent study on the black hole information problem, and the "PEE=CFF (component flow flux)" prescription, which is proposed recently to investigate the holographic PEE in the framework of bit thread formulation. Our study provides a bit thread description of the AdS/BCFT setup, which characterizes the specific entanglement details between the different parts of the system with an entanglement island, and m…
In Landau Fermi liquids, screened impurities support quasi-bound states, representing electrons bound to the impurity but making virtual excursions away. Signals of these quasi-bound states are electron-impurity scattering phase shifts and the corresponding resonances in cross sections. We consider large-$N$, strongly-coupled $(3+1)$-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory on the Coulomb branch, where an adjoint scalar has a non-zero expectation value that breaks $SU(N) \to SU(N-1) \times U(1)$. In the holographic dual we re-visit well-known solutions for a probe D…
In this work we aim at discussing the effects of higher order corrections to curvature on the Lovelock AdS black holes quasinormal spectrum and, in the context of gauge/gravity correspondence, their consequences for the formation of holographic superconductors. We also explore the hydrodynamic limit of the $U(1)$ gauge field perturbations in $d$ dimensions.
Some Physics (obtaining lattice-compatible deconfinement temperature, some transport coefficients and Einstein's relation) and Mathematics (torsion classes and supersymmetry) issues pertaining to the delocalized SYZ type IIA mirror of [1] and its M theory uplift in the MQGP limit of [2], are discussed.
We study the poles of the retarded Green functions of a holographic superconductor. The model shows a second order phase transition where a charged scalar operator condenses and a U(1) symmetry is spontaneously broken. The poles of the holographic Green functions are the quasinormal modes in an AdS black hole background. We study the spectrum of quasinormal frequencies in the broken phase, where we establish the appearance of a massless or hydrodynamic mode at the critical temperature as expected for a second order phase transition. In the broken phase we find the pole representing second soun…
We discuss various aspect of the holographic correspondence between 5-d gravity and 4-d field theory. First of all, we describe deformations of N=4 Super Yang-Mills (SYM) theories in terms of 5-d gauged supergravity. In particular, we describe N=0 and N=1 deformations of N=4 SYM to confining theories. Secondly, we describe recent proposals for the holographic dual of the renormalization group and for 4-d central charges associated to it. We conclude with a ``holographic'' proof of the Goldstone theorem.
We investigate the dynamical stability of the holographic system with two order parameters, which exhibits competition and coexistence of condensations. In the linear regime, we have developed the gauge dependent formalism to calculate the quasi-normal modes by gauge fixing, which turns out be considerably convenient. Furthermore, by giving different Gaussian wave packets as perturbations at the initial time, we numerically evolve the full nonlinear system until it arrives at the final equilibrium state. Our results show that the dynamical stability is consistent with the thermodynamical stabi…
We use the holographic methods to calculate the entanglement entropy for field theories modified by $T\bar{T}$ insertion. Based on the available holographic proposals, this calculation reduces to the holographic computations in AdS with finite cut-off. We perform a direct holographic calculation of the entanglement entropy for two dimensional deformed theory. By direct we mean the evaluation of the gravitational action in the bulk spacetime which has been reconstructed from a dual CFT$_2$ on $n$-sheeted Riemann surface as a finite cut-off boundary. We also apply Ryu-Takayanagi's prescription t…
We study a general flat space/boson star transition model in quasi-local ensemble through approaches familiar from holographic superconductor theories. We manage to find a parameter $ψ_{2}$, which is proved to be useful in disclosing properties of phase transitions. In this work, we explore effects of the scalar mass, scalar charge and St$\ddot{u}$ckelberg mechanism on the critical phase transition points and the order of transitions mainly from behaviors of the parameter $ψ_{2}$. We mention that properties of transitions in quasi-local gravity are strikingly similar to those in holographic su…
We study a simple extension of the original Hartnoll, Herzog and Horowitz (HHH) holographic superfluid model with two nonlinear scalar self-interaction terms $λ|ψ|^4$ and $τ|ψ|^6$ in the probe limit. Depending on the value of $λ$ and $τ$, this setup allows us to realize a large spectrum of holographic phase transitions which are 2nd, 1st and 0th order as well as the ``cave of wind'' phase transition. We speculate the landscape pictures and explore the near equilibrium dynamics of the lowest quasinormal modes (QNMs) across the whole phase diagram at both zero and finite wave-vector. We find tha…
In this work, we consider a specific shift-invariant quartic Horndeski model, deriving new planar black hole solutions with axionic hair. We explore these solutions in terms of their horizon structure and their thermodynamic properties. We use the gauge/gravity dictionary to derive the DC transport coefficients of the holographic dual with the aim of investigating how the new deformation affects the universality of some renown bound proposals. Although most of them are found to hold true, we nevertheless find a highly interesting parametric violation of the heat conductivity-to-temperature low…
We study the charge response in complex frequency plane and the quasi-normal modes (QNMs) of the boundary quantum field theory with momentum dissipation dual to a probe generalized Maxwell system with Weyl correction. When the strength of the momentum dissipation $\hatα$ is small, the pole structure of the conductivity is similar to the case without the momentum dissipation. The qualitative correspondence between the poles of the real part of the conductivity of the original theory and the ones of its electromagnetic (EM) dual theory approximately holds when $γ\rightarrow -γ$ with $γ$ being th…
In this thesis, we study some aspects of a possible holographic correspondence in two different systems: three dimensional Chern-Simons theory and asymptotically flat space-times. In the former we use simplicial techniques to study CS/WZW correspondence and in particular we construct the discretized WZW partition function for SU(2) group at level 1. In the latter we outline the main characteristics of a field theory living at null infinity invariant under the action of the asymptotic symmetry group: the BMS group. In particular, using fibre bundle techniques, we derive the covariant wave equat…
We investigate the effect of external magnetic fields on equilibration in the improved holographic QCD theory in the deconfined phase using the AdS/CFT correspondence. In particular we calculate the quasinormal mode spectra in the corresponding black brane solutions and study their dependence on temperature, momentum and magnetic field, both in the scalar and the shear channels. We find complex patterns in the motion of quasinormal modes on the complex plane, including certain cross overs between the lowest lying modes under varying magnetic field, momentum and temperature. We also discover a …
We show that the field theories dual to the homogeneous holographic models with spontaneously broken translations display several distinctive properties of quasicrystals, aperiodic crystals with long-range order (e.g. incommensurate charge density waves). This interpretation suggests that the longitudinal diffusive mode, observed in the spectrum of excitations of these systems, is the diffusive Goldstone boson typical of quasicrystals -- the phason. Moreover, following this idea, and using the effective field theory formalism for Goldstone modes in dissipative systems, we are able to derive th…
We prove several universal properties of charge transport in generic CFTs holographic to nonminimal extensions of four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory with exact electromagnetic duality invariance. First, we explicitly verify that the conductivity of these theories at zero momentum is a universal frequency-independent constant. Then, we derive their analytical expressions for non-zero momentum in any holographic duality-invariant theory for large frequencies and in the limit of small frequencies and momenta. Next, in the absence of terms that couple covariant derivatives of the curvature t…
Following a series of similar calculations in simpler non-conformal holographic setups, we determine the quasinormal mode spectrum for an operator dual to a gauge-invariant scalar field within the Improved Holographic QCD framework. At temperatures somewhat above the critical temperature of the deconfinement transition, we find a small number of clearly separated modes followed by a branch-cut-like structure parallel to the real axis, the presence of which is linked to the form of the IHQCD potential employed. The temperature dependence of the lowest nonzero mode is furthermore used to study t…
The whole idea of holography as put forward by Gerard 't Hooft assumes that data on a boundary determine physics in the volume. This corresponds to a Dirichlet problem for euclidean signature, or to a Goursat (characteristic) problem in the lorentzian setting. Is this last aspect of the problem that is explored here for Ricci flat spaces with vanishing cosmological constant.
We analyze the structure of supersymmetric Godel-like cosmological solutions of string theory. Just as the original four-dimensional Godel universe, these solutions represent rotating, topologically trivial cosmologies with a homogeneous metric and closed timelike curves. First we focus on "phenomenological" aspects of holography, and identify the preferred holographic screens associated with inertial comoving observers in Godel universes. We find that holography can serve as a chronology protection agency: The closed timelike curves are either hidden behind the holographic screen, or broken b…
In this paper we study (3+1) dimensional holographic superconductors in quasi-topological gravity which is recently proposed by R. Myers {\it et.al.}. Through both analytical and numerical analysis, we find in general the condensation becomes harder with the increase of coupling parameters of higher curvature terms. In particular, comparing with those in ordinary Gauss-Bonnet gravity, we find that positive cubic corrections in quasi-topological gravity suppress the condensation while negative cubic terms make it easier. We also calculate the conductivity numerically for various coupling parame…
We study the low energy and low momentum behavior of current correlators in a class of holographic zero-temperature finite density critical theories which do not respect the hyperscaling relation. The dual holographic description is assumed to be given by probe D-branes embedded in background geometries characterized by a dynamical critical exponent $z$ and a hyperscaling violation exponent $θ$. We show that a subset of these theories with $1\leq z<2(1-θ/d)$ exhibit a stable linearly-dispersing mode in their low energy spectrum of excitations. This mode, which appears as a pole in the retarded…