Domain wall holography for finite temperature scaling solutions

Abstract

We investigate a class of near-extremal solutions of Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory with electric charge and power law scaling, dual to charged IR phases of relativistic field theories at low temperature. These are exact solutions of theories with domain wall vacua; hence, we use nonconformal holography to relate the bulk and boundary theories. We numerically construct a global interpolating solution between the IR charged solutions and the UV domain wall vacua for arbitrary physical choices of Lagrangian parameters. By passing to a conformal frame in which the domain wall metric becomes that of AdS, we uncover a generalized scale invariance of the IR scaling solution, indicating a connection to the physics of Lifshitz fixed points. Finally, guided by effective field theoretic principles and the physics of nonconformal D-branes, we argue for the applicability of domain wall holography even in theories with AdS critical points, namely those theories for which a scalar potential is dominated by a single exponential term over a large range.