Mechanical stability of homogeneous holographic solids under finite shear strain

Abstract

We study the linear stability of holographic homogeneous solids (HHS) at finite temperature and in presence of a background shear strain by means of a large scale quasi-normal mode analysis which extends beyond the hydrodynamic limit. We find that mechanical instability can arise either as a result of a complex speed of sound — gradient instability — or of a negative diffusion constant. Surprisingly, the simplest HHS models are linearly stable for arbitrarily large values of the background strain. For more complex HHS, the onset of the diffusive instability always precedes that of the gradient instability, which becomes the dominant destabilizing process only above a critical value of the background shear strain. Finally, we observe that the critical strains for the two instabilities approach each other at low temperatures. We conclude by presenting a phase diagram for HHS as a function of temperature and background shear strain which shows interesting similarities with the physics of superfluids in presence of background superfluid velocity.