Thermodynamics of anisotropic branes

Abstract

We study the thermodynamics of flavor D7-branes embedded in an anisotropic black brane solution of type IIB supergravity. The flavor branes undergo a phase transition between a `Minkowski embedding', in which they lie outside of the horizon, and a `black hole embedding', in which they fall into the horizon. This transition depends on the black hole temperature, its degree of anisotropy, and the mass of the flavor degrees of freedom. It happens either at a critical temperature or at a critical anisotropy. A general lesson we learn from this analysis is that the anisotropy, in this particular realization, induces similar effects as the temperature. In particular, increasing the anisotropy bends the branes more and more into the horizon. Moreover, we observe that the transition becomes smoother for higher anisotropies.