Quantum critical superconductors in string theory and M-theory

摘要

We construct zero-temperature solutions of supergravity theories in five and four dimensions which in-terpolate between two copies of anti-de Sitter space, one of which preserves an Abelian gauge symmetrywhile the other breaks it. These domain wall solutions can be lifted to solutions of type IIB string theoryand eleven-dimensional supergravity. They describe quantum critical behavior and emergent relativisticconformal symmetry in a superfluid or superconducting state of a strongly coupled dual gauge theory.We include computations of frequency-dependent conductivities which exhibit power law scaling in theinfrared, with exponents determined by irrelevant perturbations to the symmetry-breaking anti-de Sitterbackground.