From black holes to strange metals

TL;DR

This paper explores a new class of non-Fermi liquids using gauge/gravity duality, revealing properties similar to strange metals, including nonanalytic temporal scaling and inverse temperature conductivity.

Contribution

It introduces a gauge/gravity duality framework to model non-Fermi liquids with IR fixed points exhibiting unique scaling behavior, advancing understanding of strange metal phenomena.

Findings

Spectral functions resemble those of strange metals.

Conductivity inversely proportional to temperature.

Properties governed by IR fixed point scaling dimension.

Abstract

Since the mid-eighties there has been an accumulation of metallic materials whose thermodynamic and transport properties differ significantly from those predicted by Fermi liquid theory. Examples of these so-called non-Fermi liquids include the strange metal phase of high transition temperature cuprates, and heavy fermion systems near a quantum phase transition. We report on a class of non-Fermi liquids discovered using gauge/gravity duality. The low energy behavior of these non-Fermi liquids is shown to be governed by a nontrivial infrared (IR) fixed point which exhibits nonanalytic scaling behavior only in the temporal direction. Within this class we find examples whose single-particle spectral function and transport behavior resemble those of strange metals. In particular, the contribution from the Fermi surface to the conductivity is inversely proportional to the temperature. In our treatment these properties can be understood as being controlled by the scaling dimension of the fermion operator in the emergent IR fixed point.