We construct a holographic SU(2) p-wave superconductor model with Weyl corrections. The high derivative (HD) terms do not seem to spoil the generation of the p-wave superconducting phase. We mainly study the properties of AC conductivity, which is absent in holographic SU(2) p-wave superconductor with Weyl corrections. The conductivities in superconducting phase exhibit obvious anisotropic behaviors. Along $y$ direction, the conductivity $σ_{yy}$ is similar to that of holographic s-wave superconductor. The superconducting energy gap exhibits a wide extension. For the conductivity $σ_{xx}$ along $x$ direction, the behaviors of the real part in the normal state are closely similar to that of $σ_{yy}$. However, the anisotropy of the conductivity obviously shows up in the superconducting phase. A Drude-like peak at low frequency emerges in $Reσ_{xx}$ once the system enters into the superconducting phase, regardless of the behaviors in normal state.
We study holographic superconductivity by expanding the equations in the inverse of the number of spacetime dimensions D. We obtain an analytic expression for the critical temperature as a function of the conformal dimension of the condensate operator. Its accuracy for 3+1-dimensional superconductors is better than 15%. The analysis reveals a simple, and quantitative, explanation for the onset of the superconducting instability, as well as universal features of holographic superconductivity in the large D limit. In particular, this allows to easily compute the effects of backreaction on the cr…
We investigate the behaviors of holographic entanglement entropy for AdS soliton geometries in the presence of higher derivative corrections. We calculate the leading higher derivative corrections for the AdS5 setup in type IIB string and for the AdS4,7 ones in M-theory. We also study the holographic entanglement entropy in Gauss-Bonnet gravity and study how the confinement/deconfinement phase transition observed in AdS solitons is affected by the higher derivative corrections.
We construct a holographic superconductor model, based on a gravity theory, which exhibits novel metal-insulator transitions. We investigate the condition for the condensation of the scalar field over the parameter space, and then focus on the superconductivity over the insulating phase with a hard gap, which is supposed to be Mott-like. It turns out that the formation of the hard gap in the insulating phase benefits the superconductivity. This phenomenon is analogous to the fact that the pseudogap phase can promote the pre-pairing of electrons in high $T_c$ cuprates. We expect that this work …
Using seven-dimensional Sasaki-Einstein spaces we construct solutions of D=11 supergravity that are holographically dual to superconductors in three spacetime dimensions. Our numerical results indicate a new zero temperature solution dual to a quantum critical point.
I review recent work on holographic superconductivity with Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, and show how the critical temperature of the superconductor depends on both gravitational backreaction and the Gauss-Bonnet parameter, using both analytic and numerical arguments. I also review computations of the conductivity, finding the energy gap, and demonstrating that there is no universal gap ratio, $ω_g/T_c$, for these superconductors.
We study a general class of holographic superconductor models via the Stückelberg mechanism in the non-minimal derivative coupling theory in which the charged scalar field is kinetically coupling to Einstein's tensor. We explore the effects of the coupling parameter on the critical temperature, the order of phase transitions and the critical exponents near the second-order phase transition point. Moreover, we compute the electric conductive using the probe approximation and check the ratios $ω_g/T_c$ for the different coupling parameters.
Studying the color superconductivity (CSC) phase is essential to understand the physics in the core of the neutron stars which is the only known context where the CSC phase might appear due to the gravitational force squeezing the matter to a sufficiently high density. We propose a simple holographic dual description of the CSC phase transition in the realistic Yang-Mills theory with the power-law Maxwell field. We find the CSC phase transition with the large color number in the deconfinement phase, which is not found in the case of the usual Maxwell field, if the power parameter characterizin…
We construct a $6$ derivative holographic superconductor model in the $4$-dimensional bulk spacetimes, in which the normal state describes a quantum critical (QC) phase. The phase diagram $(γ_1,\hat{T}_c)$ and the condensation as the function of temperature are worked out numerically. We observe that with the decrease of the coupling parameter $γ_1$, the critical temperature $\hat{T}_c$ decreases and the formation of charged scalar hair becomes harder. We also calculate the optical conductivity. An appealing characteristic is a wider extension of the superconducting energy gap, comparing with …
We introduce a Weyl term into the Einstein-Maxwell-Axion theory in four dimensional spacetime. Up to the first order of the Weyl coupling parameter $γ$, we construct charged black brane solutions without translational invariance in a perturbative manner. Among all the holographic frameworks involving higher derivative gravity, we are the first to obtain metal-insulator transitions (MIT) when varying the system parameters at zero temperature. Furthermore, we study the holographic entanglement entropy (HEE) of strip geometry in this model and find that the second order derivative of HEE with res…
We investigate the effects of Lifshitz dynamical critical exponent z on a family of minimal D=4+1 holographic superconducting models, with a particular focus on magnetic phenomena. We see that it is possible to have a consistent Ginzburg-Landau approach to holographic superconductivity in a Lifshitz background. By following this phenomenological approach we are able to compute a wide array of physical quantities. We also calculate the Ginzburg-Landau parameter for different condensates, and conclude that in systems with higher dynamical critical exponent, vortex formation is more strongly unfa…
We construct general models for holographic superconductivity parametrized by three couplings which are functions of a real scalar field and show that under general assumptions they describe superconducting phase transitions. While some features are universal and model independent, important aspects of the quantum critical behavior strongly depend on the choice of couplings, such as the order of the phase transition and critical exponents of second-order phase transitions. In particular, we study a one-parameter model where the phase transition changes from second to first order above some cri…
By combining a holographic p-wave superconductor model and a holographic ferromagnetism model, we study the coexistence and competition of ferromagnetism and p-wave superconductivity. It is found that the results depend on the self-interaction of magnetic moment of the complex vector field and which phase appears first. In the case that the ferromagnetic phase appears first, if the interaction is attractive, the system shows the ferromagnetism and superconductivity can coexist in low temperatures. If the interaction is repulsive, the system will only be in a pure ferromagnetic state. In the ca…
We consider the holographic dual of SQCD in the conformal phase. It is based on a higher derivative gravity theory, which ensures the correct field theory anomalies. This is then related to a six dimensional gravity theory via S^1 compactification. Some speculations are then made about the correspondence, Seiberg duality, and the nature of confinement from a holographic perspective.
We construct a family of minimal phenomenological models for holographic superconductors in d=4+1 AdS spacetime and study the effect of scalar and gauge field fluctuations. By making a Ginzburg-Landau interpretation of the dual field theory, we determine through holographic techniques a phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau Lagrangian and the temperature dependence of physical quantities in the superconducting phase. We obtain insight on the behaviour of the Ginzburg-Landau parameter and whether the systems behaves as a Type I or Type II superconductor. Finally, we apply a constant external magneti…
We present the new method to calculate the critical temperature as a function of $Δ$, conformal dimension of the cooper operator. We find that, in the regime $1/2\leq Δ<1$ where the AC conductivity does not show a gap, the critical temperature is not well defined. We also got expression of AC conductivity for $Δ=2$, which agrees with numerical result in the probe approximation.
The holographic entanglement entropy for the most general higher derivative gravity is investigated. We find a new type of Wald entropy, which appears on entangling surface without the rotational symmetry and reduces to usual Wald entropy on Killing horizon. Furthermore, we obtain a formal formula of HEE for the most general higher derivative gravity and work it out exactly for some squashed cones. As an important application, we derive HEE for gravitational action with one derivative of the curvature when the extrinsic curvature vanishes. We also study some toy models with non-zero extrinsic …
We build a holographic superconductor model with a scalar triplet charged under an SU(2) gauge field in the bulk. In this model, the s-wave and p-wave condensates can be consistently realized. We find that there are totally four phases in this model, namely, the normal phase without any condensate, s-wave phase, p-wave phase and the s+p coexisting phase. By calculating Gibbs free energy, the s+p coexisting phase turns out to be thermodynamically favored once it can appear. The phase diagram with the dimension of the scalar operator and temperature is drawn. The temperature range for the s+p co…
We study the conductivity from higher derivative electrodynamics in a holographic quantum critical phase (QCP). Two key features of this model are observed. First, a rescaling for the Euclidean frequency by a constant is needed when fitting the quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) data for the $O(2)$ QCP. We conclude that it is a common characteristic of the higher derivative electrodynamics. Second, both the Drude-like peak at low frequency and the pronounced peak can simultaneously emerge. They are more evident for the relevant operators than for the irrelevant operators. In addition, our result also f…
We consider higher derivative gravity and obtain universal relations for the shape coefficients $(f_a, f_b, f_c)$ of the shape dependent universal part of the Rényi entropy for four dimensional CFTs in terms of the parameters $(c, t_2, t_4)$ of two-point and three-point functions of stress tensors. As a consistency check, these shape coefficients $f_a$ and $f_c$ satisfy the differential relation as derived previously for the Rényi entropy. Interestingly, these holographic relations also apply to weakly coupled conformal field theories such as theories of free fermions and vectors but are viola…
We discuss the gravitational dual of a holographic superconductor consisting of a U(1) gauge field, a complex scalar field coupled to a charged AdS black hole and a higher-derivative coupling between the U(1) gauge field and the scalar with coupling constant η. In the presence of a magnetic field, the system possesses localized spatially dependent droplet solutions which, in the low temperature limit, have smaller critical temperature for η>0 than the droplet solutions without the interaction term (η=0). In the weak magnetic field limit, the opposite behavior is observed: the critical temperat…
The gravitational Lagrangian can be written as a summation of a bulk and a total derivative term. For some theories of gravity such as Einstein gravity, or more general Lovelock gravities, there are Lagrangian holographic relations between the bulk and the total derivative term such that the latter is fully determined by the former. However at the $D\rightarrow 2\&4$ limit, the bulks of Einstein or Gauss-Bonnet theories become themselves total derivatives. Performing the Kaluza-Klein reduction on Einstein and Gauss-Bonnet gravities gives rise to some two-dimensional or four-dimensional scalar-…
We study the condensation of a charged scalar field in a $(3+1)$-dimensional asymptotically AdS background in the context of Einsteinian cubic gravity, featuring a holographic superconductor with higher curvature corrections corresponding to a CFT with a non-vanishing value of the stress tensor three-point function $t_4$. As it was previously noticed for higher dimensional Gauss-Bonnet theory, we observe that the critical temperature of the superconducting phase transition is lowered as the higher curvature coupling grows.
We study higher derivative corrections in holographic dual of Zamolodchikov-Polchinski theorem that states the equivalence between scale invariance and conformal invariance in unitary d-dimensional Poincare invariant field theories. From the dual holographic perspective, we find that a sufficient condition to show the holographic theorem is the generalized strict null energy condition of the matter sector in effective (d+1)-dimensional gravitational theory. The same condition has appeared in the holographic dual of the "c-theorem" and our theorem suggests a deep connection between the two, whi…
We show that a D3/D7 system (at zero quark mass limit) at finite isospin chemical potential goes through a superconductor (superfluid) like phase transition. This is similar to a flavored superfluid phase studied in QCD literature, where mesonic operators condensate. We have studied the frequency dependent conductivity of the condensate and found a delta function pole in the zero frequency limit. This is an example of superconductivity in a string theory context. Consequently we have found a superfluid/supercurrent type solution and studied the associated phase diagram. The superconducting tra…
A holographic bottom-up model used in studying the superconducting system is applied to search for the color superconducting phase of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We apply the probe analysis of this model to the supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in both the confinement and deconfinement phases. In this analysis, we find the color superconductivity in both phases when the baryon chemical potential exceeds a certain critical value. This result implies that, above the critical chemical potential, a color non-singlet diquark operator, namely the Cooper pair, has its vacuum expectation value ev…
It is established that physical observables in local quantum field theories should be invariant under invertible field redefinitions. It is then expected that this statement should be true for the entanglement entropy and moreover that, via the gauge/gravity correspondence, the recipe for computing entanglement entropy holographically should also be invariant under local field redefinitions in the gravity side. We use this fact to fix the recipe for computing holographic entanglement entropy (HEE) for $f(R,R_{μν})$ theories which could be mapped to Einstein gravity. An outcome of our prescript…
We use a holographic theory to model and study the competition of four phases: an antiferromagnetic phase, a superconducting phase, a metallic phase and a striped phase, using as control parameters temperature and a doping-like parameter. We analyse the various instabilities and determine the possible phases. One class of phase diagrams, that we analyse in detail, is similar to that of high-temperature superconductors as well as other strange metal materials.
Four lectures on holography and the AdS/CFT correspondence applied to condensed matter systems. The first lecture introduces the concept of a quantum phase transition. The second lecture discusses linear response theory and Ward identities. The third lecture presents transport coefficients derived from AdS/CFT that should be applicable in the quantum critical region associated to a quantum phase transition. The fourth lecture builds in the physics of a superconducting or superfluid phase transition to the simple holographic model of the third lecture.
Understanding the role of charge density wave (CDW) in high-temperature superconductivity is a longstanding challenge in condensed matter physics. We construct a holographic superconductor model in which the $U(1)$ symmetry is spontaneously broken only due to the presence of CDWs, rather than previously known free charges with constant density. Below the critical temperature of superconductivity, CDW phase and superconducting phase coexist, which is also justified by the numerical results of optical conductivity. The competitive and cooperative relations between CDW phase and superconducting p…
The holographic approach to study strongly coupled superconductors in the presence of dark matter is reviewed. We discuss the influence of dark matter on the superconducting transition temperature of both s-wave and p-wave holographic superconductors. The upper critical field, coherence length, penetration depth of holographic superconductors as well as the metal-insulator transitions have also been analysed. Issues related to the validity of AdS/CFT correspondence for the description of superconductors studied in the laboratory and possible experiments directed towards the detection of dark m…
In this note, we discuss the basic elements that should appear in a gravitational system dual to a confining gauge theory displaying color superconductivity at large baryon density. We consider a simple system with these minimal elements, and show that for a range of parameters, the phase structure of this model as a function of temperature and baryon chemical potential exhibits phases that can be identified with confined, deconfined, and color superconducting phases in the dual field theory. We find that the critical temperature at which the superconducting phase disappears is remarkably smal…
We study a generalization of the standard holographic p-wave superconductor featuring two interacting vector order parameters. Basing our argument on the symmetry and linear response properties of the model, we propose it as a holographic effective theory describing a strongly coupled ferromagnetic superconductor. We show that the two order parameters undergo concomitant condensations as a manifestation of an intrinsically interlaced electric/magnetic dynamics. Such intertwined dynamics is confirmed by the study of the transport properties. We characterize thoroughly the equilibrium and the li…
We study the fermionic spectral function in a holographic superconductor model. At zero temperature, the black hole has zero horizon and hence the entropy of the system is zero after the back reaction of the condensate is taken into account. We find the system exhibits the famous peak-dip-hump lineshape with a sharp low-energy peak followed by a dip then a hump at higher energies. This feature is widely observed in the spectrum of several high-T_c superconductors. We also find a linear relation between the gap in the fermionic spectrum and the condensate, indicating the condensate is formed by…
In AdS/CFT, the holographic Weyl anomaly computation relates the a-anomaly coefficient to the properties of the bulk action at the UV fixed point. This universal behavior suggests the possibility of a holographic c-theorem for the a-anomaly under flows to the IR. We prove such a c-theorem for higher curvature Lovelock gravity, where the bulk equations of motion remain second order. We also explore f(R) gravity as a toy model where higher derivatives cannot be avoided. In this case, monoticity of the flow requires an additional condition related to the higher derivative nature of the theory. Th…
Holographic superconductivity of a critical Fermi surface
Institute for Theory of Condensed Matter, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（凝聚态理论研究所，卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院）；Institute for Quantum Materials and Technologies, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（量子材料与技术研究所，卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院）
In this paper, we construct a novel holographic superconductor from higher derivative (HD) gravity involving a coupling between the complex scalar field and the Weyl tensor. This HD coupling term provides a near horizon effective mass squared, which can violates IR Breitenlohner-Freedman (BF) bound by tuning the HD coupling and induces the instability of black brane such that the superconducting phase transition happens. We also study the properties of the condensation and the conductivity in the probe limit. We find that a wider extension of the superconducting energy gap ranging from 4.6 to …
We prove a holographic c-theorem for the a central charge in AdS/CFT where the bulk is described by a gravitational action built out of an arbitrary function f(R^{ab}_{cd}) of the Riemann tensor coupled to bulk matter. This theorem holds provided a generalized null energy condition involving both matter and higher curvature gravitational interactions is satisfied. As an example, we consider the case of a curvature-squared action, and find that generically the generalized null energy condition involves not just the bulk matter, but also the sign of R" where a prime denotes a radial derivative a…
The requirement of the existence of a holographic c-function for higher derivative theories is a very restrictive one and hence most theories do not possess this property. Here, we show that, when some of the parameters are fixed, the $D\geq3$ Born-Infeld gravity theories admit a holographic c-function. We work out the details of the $D=3$ theory with no free parameters, which is a non-minimal Born-Infeld type extension of new massive gravity. Moreover, we show that these theories generate an infinite number of higher derivative models admitting a c-function in a suitable expansion and therefo…
In this paper, we have constructed a bottom-up holographic model for the color superconductivity (CSC) of the Yang-Mills theory with including the higher derivative corrections which allow to study the CSC phase with the color number $N_c\geq2$. First, we consider the CSC phase transition in the context of Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet (EGB) gravity. We analyze the Cooper pair condensate in the deconfinement and confinement phases which are dual to the planar GB-RN-AdS black hole and GB-AdS soliton, respectively, where the backreaction of the matter part is taken into account. By examining the breakdo…
The difficulty of describing the gauge dependent bi-quark condensate in the QCD colour superconducting phase has made it hard to construct a holographic dual of the state. To side step this problem, we argue that near the chiral restoration transition in the temperature-chemical potential plane, the strongly coupled gluons are likely completely gapped so that the colour quantum numbers of the quarks can be thought of below that gap as global indices. A standard AdS-superconductor model can then be used to analyze the fermionic gap formation. We investigate the role of four-fermion interactions…
We consider the effect of the R^4 term in type IIA string theory on the supergravity background dual to N_c D4 branes compactified on a circle with supersymmetry breaking boundary conditions. We study the dynamics of D8 branes in this perturbed geometry in the probe approximation. This leads to an analysis of higher derivative corrections in holographic QCD beyond the supergravity approximation. We make a rough estimate of the corrections to the masses of some of the lightest (axial) vector mesons. The corrections are suppressed by a factor of (g_{YM}^2 N_c)^{-3} compared to their supergravity…
In this note we remark that the butterfly effect can be used to diagnose the phase transition of superconductivity in a holographic framework. Specifically, we compute the butterfly velocity in a charged black hole background as well as anisotropic backgrounds with Q-lattice structure. In both cases we find its derivative to the temperature is discontinuous at critical points. We also propose that the butterfly velocity can signalize the occurrence of thermal phase transition in general holographic models.
We consider the generalization of the S-duality transformation previously investigated in the context of the FQHE and s-wave superconductivity to p-wave superconductivity in 2+1 dimensions in the framework of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The vector Cooper condensate transforms under the S-duality action to the pseudovector condensate at the dual side. The 3+1-dimensional Einstein-Yang-Mills theory, the holographic dual to p-wave superconductivity, is used to investigate the S-duality action via the AdS/CFT correspondence. It is shown that in order to implement the duality transformation, chemic…
The entanglement exhibits extremal or singular behavior near quantum critical points (QCPs) in many condensed matter models. These intriguing phenomena, however, still call for a widely accepted understanding. In this letter we study this issue in holographic framework. We investigate the connection between the holographic entanglement entropy (HEE) and the quantum phase transition (QPT) in a lattice-deformed Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theory. Novel backgrounds exhibiting metal-insulator transitions (MIT) have been constructed in which both metallic phase and insulating phase have vanishing entr…
Higher derivative bulk gravity (without Riemann tensor square term) admits AdS-Schwarzschild black hole as exact solution. It is shown that induced brane geometry on such background is open, flat or closed FRW radiation dominated Universe. Higher derivative terms contributions appear in the Hawking temperature, entropy and Hubble parameter via the redefinition of 5-dimensional gravitational constant and AdS scale parameter. These higher derivative terms do not destroy the AdS-dual description of radiation represented by strongly-coupled CFT. Cardy-Verlinde formula which expresses cosmological …
We perform a perturbative (near-critical) analysis of the stability of an asymptotically Schroedinger Reissner-Nordstrom black hole with respect to generation of charged scalar hair. We find that apart from the expected instability at low temperatures typical of holographic models of superconductivity, in the presence of certain operators a similar instability appears as well at high temperatures. We propose that the reason for such a phase diagram could be due to peculiar features of the dual gauge theory or the failure of the model to provide a consistent holographic dual of a non-relativist…
In this note we address the discrepancy found by Hung, Myers and Smolkin between the holographic calculation of entanglement entropy (using the Jacobson-Myers functional for the holographic minimal surface) and the CFT trace anomaly calculation if one uses the Wald prescription to compute the entropy in six dimensions. As anticipated in our previous work [1] the discrepancy originates entirely from a total derivative term present in the trace anomaly in six dimensions.
In this letter, we study the charge response from higher derivatives over the background with homogeneous disorder introduced by axions. We first explore the bounds on the higher derivatives coupling from DC conductivity and the anomalies of causality and instabilities. Our results indicate no tighter constraints on the coupling than that over Schwarzschild-AdS (SS-AdS) background. And then we study the optical conductivity of our holographic system. We find that for the case with $γ_1<0$ and the disorder strength $\hatα<2/\sqrt{3}$, there is a crossover from a coherent to incoherent metallic …
This is a concise review of holographic superconductors and superfluids. We highlight some predictions of the holographic models and the emphasis is given to physical aspects rather than to the technical details, although some references to understand the latter are systematically provided. We include gapped systems in the discussion, motivated by the physics of high-temperature superconductivity. In order to do so we consider a compactified extra dimension (with radius R), or, alternatively, a dilatonic field. The first setup can also be used to model cylindrical superconductors; when these a…
The connection between the bulk and the boundary first law of thermodynamics in adS space has been discussed in generic higher derivative gravity. String theory corrections to the supergravity render higher derivative terms in the bulk action, proportional to different powers of string theory parameter $α'$. A variation in the cosmological constant induces a variation in the 't Hooft coupling in the boundary theory. We show that in order to match the bulk first law and Smarr relation with the boundary side one needs to include the variation of $α'$ in the bulk thermodynamics as a book keeping …
We present a holographic model of QCD with a first order chiral restoration phase transition with chemical potential, mu. The first order behaviour follows from allowing a discontinuity in the dual description as the quarks are integrated out below their constituent mass. The model predicts a deconfined yet massive quark phase at intermediate densities (350 MeV< mu <500 MeV), above the nuclear density phase, which has a very stiff equation of state and a speed of sound close to one. We also include a holographic description of a colour superconducting condensate in the chirally restored vacuum…
In systems undergoing second order phase transitions, the temperature integral of the specific heat over temperature from zero to the critical temperature is the same in both the normal and ordered phases. This entropy balance relates the critical temperature to the distribution of degrees of freedom in the normal and ordered states. Quantum criticality and fractionalization can imply an increased number of low energy degrees of freedom in both the normal and ordered states. We explore the role of entropy balance in holographic models of superconductivity, focussing on the interplay between qu…
