Families of IIB duals for nonrelativistic CFTs

TL;DR

This paper generalizes string theory embeddings of nonrelativistic spacetimes with Schrödinger symmetry to a 21-dimensional family, revealing phase transitions and diverse critical exponents in dual field theories.

Contribution

It introduces a broad family of IIB supergravity solutions with nonrelativistic symmetry, including new embeddings for various critical exponents and identifies instability-induced phase transitions.

Findings

Existence of a 21-parameter family of solutions with Schrödinger symmetry.

Identification of a hypersurface indicating a gravitational instability and phase transition.

Construction of duals for nonrelativistic critical points with arbitrary dynamical exponent z.

Abstract

We show that the recent string theory embedding of a spacetime with nonrelativistic Schrodinger symmetry can be generalised to a twenty one dimensional family of solutions with that symmetry. Our solutions include IIB backgrounds with no three form flux turned on, and arise as near horizon limits of branewave spacetimes. We show that there is a hypersurface in the space of these theories where an instability appears in the gravitational description, indicating a phase transition in the nonrelativistic field theory dual. We also present simple embeddings of duals for nonrelativistic critical points where the dynamical critical exponent can take many values z \neq 2.