Holographic Phase Transitions with Fundamental Matter

TL;DR

The holographic dual of a finite-temperature gauge theory with a small number of flavors typically contains D-brane probes in a black hole background and it is shown that this phase transition is always first order.

Abstract

The holographic dual of a finite-temperature gauge theory with a small number of flavours typically contains D-brane probes in a black hole background. At low temperature the branes sit outside the black hole and the meson spectrum is discrete and possesses a mass gap. As the temperature increases the branes approach a critical solution. Eventually they fall into the horizon and a phase transition occurs. In the new phase the meson spectrum is continuous and gapless. At large N and large 't Hooft coupling, this phase transition is always of first order, and in confining theories with heavy quarks it occurs at a temperature higher than the deconfinement temperature for the glue.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: Profiles of D7-brane embeddings in a D3-brane background. The thick black circle is the horizon ($\rho =1$).
• Figure 2: Quark mass as a function of the distance to the horizon $z_0$ for D7-brane Minkowski embeddings in a D3-brane background.
• Figure 3: Quark condensate and free-energy density for a D7 in a D3 background; note that ${\cal N} \propto T^3$. The blue dashed (red continuous) curves correspond to the Minkowski (black hole) embeddings. The dotted vertical line indicates the precise temperature of the phase transition.