Holographic Phase Transition Research Articles

A novel holographic quantum phase transition and butterfly velocity

In this paper, we make a systematical and in-depth exploration on the phase structure and the behaviors of butterfly velocity in an Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axions (EMDA) model. Depending on the model parameter, there are two kinds of mechanisms driving quantum phase transition (QPT) in this model. One is the infrared (IR) geometry to be renormalization group (RG) unstable, and the other is the strength of lattice deformation leading to some kind of bifurcating solution. We also find a novel QPT in the metal phases. The study on the behavior of the butterfly velocity crossing QPT indicates that the butterfly velocity or its first derivative exhibiting local extreme depends on the QPT mechanism. Further, the scaling behaviors of the butterfly velocity in the zero-temperature limit confirm that different phases are controlled by different IR geometries. Therefore, the butterfly velocity is a good probe to QPT and it also provides a possible way to study QPT beyond holography.

(Un)balanced Holographic Superconductors with Electric and Spin Motive Force Coupling

We study holographic phase transitions in (2+1) dimensions that possess interacting phases which result from a direct coupling between the two U(1) gauge fields. This can be interpreted as a non-minimal interaction between the electric and spin motive forces of the dual model. We first present a new analytical solution of the Einstein-Maxwell equations that describes a black hole with charge non-equivalent to the sum of the asymptotic charges of the two U(1) gauge fields and briefly discuss formation of uncharged scalar hair on this solution. We then study the formation of charged scalar hair on an uncharged black hole background and discuss the dual description of balanced as well as unbalanced superconductors.

Lifshitz scaling effects on the holographic paramagnetic-ferromagnetic phase transition

We disclose the effects of Lifshitz dynamical exponent z on the properties of holographic paramagnetic-ferromagnetic phase transition in the background of Lifshitz spacetime. To preserve the conformal invariance in higher dimensions, we consider the Power-Maxwell (PM) electrodynamics as our gauge field. We introduce a massive 2-form coupled to the PM field and perform the numerical shooting method in the probe limit by assuming the PM and the 2-form fields do not back-react on the background geometry. The obtained results indicate that the critical temperature decreases with increasing the strength of the power parameter q and dynamical exponent z. Besides, the formation of the magnetic moment in the black hole background is harder in the absence of an external magnetic field. At low temperatures, and in the absence of an external magnetic field, our result show the spontaneous magnetization and the ferromagnetic phase transition. We find that the critical exponent takes the universal value \(\beta = 1/2\) regardless of the parameters q, z, d, which is in agreement with the mean field theory. In the presence of an external magnetic field, the magnetic susceptibility satisfies the Curie-Weiss law.

Excited states of holographic superconductor with scalar field coupled to Gauss-Bonnet invariance

We study the ground state and excited states of holographic superconducting phase transition in a gravity model with scalar field coupled to Gauss-Bonnet invariance. We investigate the effect of the coupling on the condensate properties for the first three states of holographic superconductor. We find that the holographic superconducting phase transition only occurs when the coupling parameter is smaller than a critical value, which is reasonable because the strong coupling would force the scalar field to fall into the black hole. Our investigation shows that the coupling has interesting prints on the critical temperature, condensation strength and optical conductivity for the ground state, first and second excited states of the holographic superconductor.

Nonlinearly charged black hole chemistry with massive gravitons in the grand canonical ensemble

In the context of Black Hole Chemistry (BHC), holographic phase transitions of asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) charged topological black holes (TBHs) in massive gravity coupled to Power Maxwell Invariant (PMI) electrodynamics are discussed in the grand canonical (fixed $U(1)$ potential, $\Phi$) ensemble. Considering all higher-order graviton's self-interactions of (dRGT) massive gravitational field theory in arbitrary dimensions, exact TBH solutions are derived, the explicit form of the on-shell action is computed, and the associated thermodynamic quantities in the Grand Canonical Ensemble (GCE) are calculated. In addition, the validity of the first law of thermodynamics and Smarr relation are examined in the extended phase space. Regarding this model, it is shown that a van der Waals (vdW) behavior takes place in $d \ge 4$ dimensions, a typical reentrant phase transition is observed in $d \ge 5$, and both anomalous vdW and triple point phenomena are recognized in $d \ge 6$. So, the results are quite different from their counterparts in the GCE of Maxwell-massive gravity. Besides, we briefly study the critical behaviors of higher-dimensional TBHs with a conformally invariant Maxwell source as a special subgroup of our solutions for both Einstein and massive gravity theories in various ensembles.

Dilatonic states near holographic phase transitions

The spectrum of bound states of special strongly coupled confining field theories might include a parametrically light dilaton, associated with the formation of enhanced condensates that break (approximate) scale invariance spontaneously. It has been suggested in the literature that such a state may arise in connection with the theory being close to the unitarity bound in holographic models. We extend these ideas to cases where the background geometry is non-AdS, and the gravity description of the dual confining field theory has a top-down origin in supergravity. We exemplify this programme by studying the circle compactification of Romans six-dimensional half-maximal supergravity. We uncover a rich space of solutions, many of which were previously unknown in the literature. We compute the bosonic spectrum of excitations, and identify a tachyonic instability in a region of parameter space for a class of regular background solutions. A tachyon only exists along an energetically disfavoured (unphysical) branch of solutions of the gravity theory; we find evidence of a first-order phase transition that separates this region of parameter space from the physical one. Along the physical branch of regular solutions, one of the lightest scalar particles is approximately a dilaton, and it is associated with a condensate in the underlying theory. Yet, because of the location of the phase transition, its mass is not parametrically small, and it is, coincidentally, the next-to-lightest scalar bound state, rather than the lightest one.

On the holographic phase transitions at finite topological charge

Exploring the significant impacts of topological charge on the holographic phase transitions and conductivity we start from an Einstein–Maxwell system coupled with a charged scalar field in Anti-de Sitter spacetime. In our set up, the corresponding black hole (BH) is chosen to be the topological AdS one where the pressure is identified with the cosmological constant (Kubiznak and Mann in JHEP 7:33, 2012), then the AdS BH undergoes the phase transition from small to large BHs, which is totally similar to the transition from gas to liquid in the van der Waals theory. Our numerical computation shows that the process of condensation is favored at finite topological charge, in particular, the phase transition from small to large BHs in the bulk generates a mechanism for changing the order of phase transition in the boundary: the second order phase transitions occur at pressures higher than the critical pressure of the phase transition from small to large BHs while they become first order at lower pressures. This property is confirmed with the aid of holographic free energy. Finally, the frequency dependent conductivity exhibits an energy gap when the phase transition is second order and when the phase transition becomes first order this gap is either reduced or totally lost.

Gravitational waves from a holographic phase transition

We investigate first order phase transitions in a holographic setting of five-dimensional Einstein gravity coupled to a scalar field, constructing phase diagrams of the dual field theory at finite temperature. We scan over the two-dimensional parameter space of a simple bottom-up model and map out important quantities for the phase transition: the region where first order phase transitions take place; the latent heat, the transition strength parameter α, and the stiffness. We find that α is generically in the range 0.1 to 0.3, and is strongly correlated with the stiffness (the square of the sound speed in a barotropic fluid). Using the LISA Cosmology Working Group gravitational wave power spectrum model corrected for kinetic energy suppression at large α and non-conformal stiffness, we outline the observational prospects at the future space-based detectors LISA and TianQin. A TeV-scale hidden sector with a phase transition described by the model could be observable at both detectors.

Fate of false vacua in holographic first-order phase transitions

Using the holographic correspondence as a tool, we study the dynamics of first-order phase transitions in strongly coupled gauge theories at finite temperature. Considering an evolution from the large to the small temperature phase, we compute the nucleation rate of bubbles of true vacuum in the metastable phase. For this purpose, we find the relevant configurations (bounces) interpolating between the vacua and we compute the related effective actions. We start by revisiting the compact Randall-Sundrum model at high temperature. Using holographic renormalization, we compute the derivative term in the effective bounce action, that was missing in the literature. Then, we address the full problem within the top-down Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model. It displays both a confinement/deconfinement and a chiral symmetry breaking/restoration phase transition which, depending on the model parameters, can happen at different critical temperatures. For the confinement/deconfinement case we perform the numerical analysis of an effective description of the transition and also provide analytic expressions using thick and thin wall approximations. For the chiral symmetry transition, we implement a variational approach that allows us to address the challenging non-linear problem stemming from the Dirac-Born-Infeld action.

An analytic study on the excited states of holographic superconductors

Based on the Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problem, we develop a general analytic technique to investigate the excited states of the holographic superconductors. By including more higher order terms in the expansion of the trial function, we observe that the analytic results agree well with the numeric data, which indicates that the Sturm-Liouville method is very powerful to study the holographic superconductors even if we consider the excited states. For both the holographic s-wave and p-wave models, we find that the excited state has a lower critical temperature than the corresponding ground state and the difference of the dimensionless critical chemical potential between the consecutive states is around 5. Moreover, we analytically confirm that the holographic superconductor phase transition with the excited states belongs to the second order, which can be used to back up the numerical findings for both s-wave and p-wave superconductors.

Gravitational imprints from heavy Kaluza-Klein resonances

We systematically study the holographic phase transition of the radion field in a five-dimensional warped model which includes a scalar potential with a power-like behavior. We consider Kaluza-Klein (KK) resonances with masses $m_{\rm KK}$ at the TeV scale or beyond. The backreaction of the radion field on the gravitational metric is taken into account by using the superpotential formalism. The confinement/deconfinement first order phase transition leads to a gravitational wave stochastic background which mainly depends on the scale $m_{\rm KK}$ and the number of colors, $N$, in the dual theory. Its power spectrum peaks at a frequency that depends on the amount of tuning required in the electroweak sector. It turns out that the present and forthcoming gravitational wave observatories can probe scenarios where the KK resonances are very heavy. Current aLIGO data already rule out vector boson KK resonances with masses in the interval $m_{\rm KK}\sim(1 - 10) \times 10^5$ TeV. Future gravitational experiments will be sensitive to resonances with masses $m_{\rm KK}\lesssim 10^5$ TeV (LISA), $10^8$ TeV (aLIGO Design) and $10^9$ TeV (ET). Finally, we also find that the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis bound in the frequency spectrum turns into a lower bound for the nucleation temperature as $T_n \gtrsim 10^{-4}\sqrt{N} \,m_{\rm KK}$.

Holographic phase transition from novel Gauss\u2013Bonnet AdS black holes

In the framework of holography, we discuss on the phase transition behavior from a novel Gauss–Bonnet AdS black hole discovered in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 081301 (2020)] in both charged and neutral cases. First, we explore the thermodynamic behavior for the black hole entropy by investigating T-S diagram, specific heat capacity and free energy, and we find that, in the T-S plane, the black hole exhibits a van der Waals phase transition similar to that in P-V plane in extended phase space. Secondly, we detect thermodynamic phase transition for the two point correlation function, and find that, the van der Waals phase transition can also be displayed in the T-delta L plane which is completely similar to that of black hole entropy in the T-S plane. Our result turns out that, not only the charged but also neutral cases, we can observe holographic van der Waals phase transition for the novel Gauss–Bonnet AdS black hole by employing the black hole entropy and two point correlation function.

Scalarization of asymptotically anti–de Sitter black holes with applications to holographic phase transitions

We study the spontaneous scalarization of spherically symmetric, static and asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (aAdS) black holes in a scalar-tensor gravity model with non-mininal coupling of the form $\phi^2\left(\alpha{\cal R} + \gamma {\cal G}\right)$, where $\alpha$ and $\gamma$ are constants, while ${\cal R}$ and ${\cal G}$ are the Ricci scalar and Gauss-Bonnet term, respectively. Since these terms act as an effective ``mass'' for the scalar field, non-trivial values of the scalar field in the black hole space-time are possible for {\it a priori} vanishing scalar field mass. In particular, we demonstrate that the scalarization of an aAdS black hole requires the curvature invariant $-\left(\alpha{\cal R} + \gamma {\cal G}\right)$ to drop below the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound close to the black hole horizon, while it asymptotes to a value well above the bound. The dimension of the dual operator on the AdS boundary depends on the parameters $\alpha$ and $\gamma$ and we demonstrate that -- for fixed operator dimension -- the expectation value of this dual operator increases with decreasing temperature of the black hole, i.e. of the dual field theory. When taking backreaction of the space-time into account, we find that the scalarization of the black hole is the dual description of a phase transition in a strongly coupled quantum system, i.e. corresponds to a holographic phase transition. A possible application are liquid-gas quantum phase transitions, e.g. in $^4$He. Finally, we demonstrate that extremal black holes with $AdS_2\times S^2$ near-horizon geometry {\it cannot support regular scalar fields on the horizon} in the scalar-tensor model studied here.

Holographic properties of phase transition behavior in AdS spacetime of massive gravity

In this work, we intend to investigate the phase transition behavior in AdS spacetime of massive gravity. We found that it can exhibit different phase transitions in the T−S plane. We further study specific heat capacity and free energy of the spacetime, and Cq−S and F−T phase structures with different parameters are also plotted. The results show that the phase structures are related to the charge Q, the parameters γ and λ of the AdS spacetime of massive gravity. In addition, by utilizing two point correlation function, holographic phase transitions can also be displayed in the T−δL plane, which means phase transition behavior can be detected by the two point correlation function.

Analytical study of holographic p-wave superfluid models in Gauss\u2013Bonnet gravity

In Gauss–Bonnet gravity, we analytically investigate the p-wave superfluid models in five dimensional AdS soliton and AdS black hole in order to explore the influences of the higher curvature correction on the holographic superfluid phase transition. We observe that the analytical findings are in good agreement with the numerical computations. Our results show that the critical chemical potential of the system increases with the increase of the Gauss–Bonnet parameter in AdS soliton background, while the critical temperature decreases as the Gauss–Bonnet factor grows if the phase transition of the system is of the second order in AdS black hole background, both of which indicate that the higher curvature correction hinders the formation of the condensation of the vector operator. Moreover, the critical exponent of the system takes the mean-field value 1/2, which is independent of the Gauss–Bonnet parameter and the spatial component of the gauge field.

Note on holographic subregion complexity and QCD phase transition

Using holographic subregion complexity, we study the confinement-deconfinement phase transition of quantum chromodynamics. In the model we consider here, we observe a connection between the potential energy of probe meson and the behavior of its complexity. Moreover, near the critical point, at which the phase transition takes place, our numerical calculations indicate that we need less information to specify a meson in the non-conformal vacuum than in the conformal one, despite the fact that the non-conformal vacuum has larger energy!

Holographic paramagnetic-ferromagnetic phase transition with Power-Maxwell electrodynamics

We explore the effects of Power-Maxwell nonlinear electrodynamics on the properties of holographic paramagnetic-ferromagnetic phase transition in the background of Schwarzchild Anti-de Sitter (AdS) black hole. For this purpose, we introduce a massive 2−form coupled to the Power-Maxwell field. We perform the numerical shooting method in the probe limit by assuming the Power-Maxwell and the 2−form fields do not back react on the background geometry. We observe that increasing the strength of the power parameter causes the formation of magnetic moment in the black hole background harder and critical temperature lower. In the absence of external magnetic field and at the low temperatures, the spontaneous magnetization and the ferromagnetic phase transition happen. In this case, the critical exponent for magnetic moment is always 1/2 which is in agreement with the result from the mean field theory. In the presence of external magnetic field, the magnetic susceptibility satisfies the Cure-Weiss law.

Weyl semimetal/insulator transition from holography

We study a holographic model which exhibits a quantum phase transition from the strongly interacting Weyl semimetal phase to an insulating phase. In the holographic insulating phase there is a hard gap in the real part of frequency dependent diagonal conductivities. However, the anomalous Hall conductivity is nonzero at zero frequency, indicting that it is a Chern insulator. This holographic quantum phase transition is always of first order, signified by a discontinuous anomalous Hall conductivity at the phase transition, in contrast to the very continuous holographic Weyl semimetal/trivial semimetal phase transition. Our work reveals the novel phase structure of strongly interacting Weyl semimetal.

Rapid holographic phase transition with brane-localized curvature

We study the finite-temperature properties of the Randall-Sundrum model in the presence of brane-localized curvature. At high temperature, as dictated by AdS/CFT, the theory is in a confined phase dual to the planar AdS black hole. When the radion is stabilized, \`a la Goldberger-Wise, a holographic first-order phase transition proceeds. The brane-localized curvature contributes to the radion kinetic energy, substantially decreasing the critical bubble energy. Contrary to previous results, the phase transition completes at much larger values of $N$, the number of degrees of freedom in the CFT. Moreover, the field value of the bulk scalar on the TeV-brane is allowed to become large, while remaining consistent with back-reaction constraints. Assisted by this fact, we find that for a wide region in the parameter space tunneling happens rather quickly, i.e. the nucleation temperature becomes of the order of the critical temperature. At zero temperature, the most important signature of brane-localized curvature is the reduction of spin-2 Kaluza-Klein graviton masses and a heavier radion.

Cosmological phase transitions in warped space: gravitational waves and collider signatures

We study the electroweak phase transition within a 5D warped model including a scalar potential with an exponential behavior, and strong back-reaction over the metric, in the infrared. By means of a novel treatment of the superpotential formalism, we explore parameter regions that were previously inaccessible. We find that for large enough values of the t’Hooft parameter (e.g. N ≃ 25) the holographic phase transition occurs, and it can force the Higgs to undergo a first order electroweak phase transition, suitable for electroweak baryogenesis. The model exhibits gravitational waves and colliders signatures. It typically predicts a stochastic gravitational wave background observable both at the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and at the Einstein Telescope. Moreover the radion tends to be heavy enough such that it evades current constraints, but may show up in future LHC runs.