Holographic spontaneous anisotropy

Abstract

We construct a family of holographic duals to anisotropic states in a strongly coupled gauge theory. On the field theory side the anisotropy is generated by giving a vacuum expectation value to a dimension three operator. We obtain our gravity duals by considering the geometry corresponding to the intersection of D3- and D5- branes along 2+1 dimensions. Our backgrounds are supersymmetric and solve the fully backreacted equations of motion of ten-dimensional supergravity with smeared D5-brane sources. In all cases the geometry flows to $Ad{S}_5\times {\mathbb{S}}^5$ in the UV, signaling an isotropic UV fixed point of the dual field theory. In the IR, depending on the parameters of the solution, we find two possible behaviors: an isotropic fixed point or a geometry with anisotropic Lifshitz-like scaling symmetry. We study several properties of the solutions, including the entanglement entropy of strips. We show that any natural extension of existing $c$-functions will display non-monotonic behavior, conforming with the presence of new degrees of freedom only at intermediate energy scales.

23 pages+3 appendices, 9 figures

References in corpus (20)

• Holographic c-theorems in arbitrary dimensions
• Horizon formation and far-from-equilibrium isotropization in supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma
• Seeing a c-theorem with holography
• Metallic AdS/CFT
• Consequences of a condensed matter realization of Lorentz violating QED in Weyl semi-metals
• Superconductivity from gauge/gravity duality with flavor
• AdS/CFT with Flavour in Electric and Magnetic Kalb-Ramond Fields
• Finite Temperature Large N Gauge Theory with Quarks in an External Magnetic Field
• Quarks in an External Electric Field in Finite Temperature Large N Gauge Theory
• Compactifications of the Klebanov-Witten CFT and new $Ad{S}_3$ backgrounds
• A Strongly Coupled Anisotropic Fluid From Dilaton Driven Holography
• Towards the description of anisotropic plasma at strong coupling
• Relating Follicly-Challenged Compact Stars to Bald Black Holes
• Holographic chiral magnetic spiral
• D3-D5 theories with unquenched flavors
• Anisotropic plasmas from axion and dilaton deformations
• Flowing from $Ad{S}_5$ to $Ad{S}_3$ with $T^{1,1}$
• Gravity dual of a multilayer system
• Thermodynamics of anisotropic branes
• Holographic Lifshitz flows and the null energy condition

Cited by in corpus (19)

• Unified weak/strong coupling framework for nuclear matter and neutron stars
• Holographic Entanglement Entropy in Anisotropic Background with Confinement-Deconfinement Phase Transition
• Is entanglement a probe of confinement?
• Holographic approach to compact stars and their binary mergers
• Detecting Topological Quantum Phase Transitions via the c-Function
• S-folds and holographic RG flows on the D3-brane
• Kasner interiors from analytic hairy black holes
• Thermodynamics and transport of holographic nodal line semimetals
• Risking your NEC
• Quantum information probes of charge fractionalization in large-$N$ gauge theories
• Bounding entanglement wedge cross sections
• Breaking rotations without violating the KSS viscosity bound
• Constraining Non-Relativistic RG Flows with Holography
• Holographic $a$-functions and Boomerang RG Flows
• Flavored anisotropic black holes
• Velocity Laws for Bound States in Asymptotically AdS Geometries
• Flavors of entanglement
• Entanglement entropies of an interval in the free Schrödinger field theory at finite density
• Non-perturbative Aspects of Quantum Field Theories from Holography