Coherent vs incoherent transport in holographic strange insulators

Abstract

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 regards, one can associate these two classes to the normal band insulators due to the strong ionic potential, and Mott insulator due to the commensurate lock in of the charge density wave. We study different features of these classes on the explicit example of a holographic helical model with homogeneous Bianchy VII type translational symmetry breaking, and uncover the main mechanisms underlying transport in these two cases. We find that while transport in the explicit relevant case is governed by the incoherent conductivity, in the pinned spontaneous case the leading contribution comes from the coherent part.

21 pages + appendices, 15 figures; v2: revised version

References in corpus (12)

• Viscosity in Strongly Interacting Quantum Field Theories from Black Hole Physics
• Theory of the Nernst effect near quantum phase transitions in condensed matter, and in dyonic black holes
• Momentum dissipation and effective theories of coherent and incoherent transport
• Thermoelectric DC conductivities from black hole horizons
• Holographic Metals and Insulators with Helical Symmetry
• Holographic Phonons
• Doping the holographic Mott insulator
• DC resistivity of quantum critical, charge density wave states from gauge-gravity duality
• Incoherent transport for phases that spontaneously break translations
• Incoherent conductivity of holographic charge density waves
• Holographic discommensurations
• Classical and quantum temperature fluctuations via holography

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