Holographic p-wave superconductors from Gauss-Bonnet gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the Gauss-Bonnet gravity correction influences the properties of holographic p-wave superconductors, revealing that increased Gauss-Bonnet coupling makes condensation harder and affects conductivity and excitation spectra.

Contribution

It introduces the study of Gauss-Bonnet gravity effects on holographic p-wave superconductors, highlighting the impact on condensation and conductivity behaviors, especially beyond the causality bound.

Findings

Condensation becomes harder with larger Gauss-Bonnet coefficient.

Conductivity decreases as the Gauss-Bonnet coefficient increases.

Unusual behavior observed when the Gauss-Bonnet coefficient exceeds 9/100.

Abstract

We study the holographic p-wave superconductors in a five-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet gravity with an SU(2) Yang-Mills gauge field. In the probe approximation, we find that when the Gauss-Bonnet coefficient grows, the condensation of the vector field becomes harder, both the perpendicular and parallel components, with respect to the direction of the condensation, of the anisotropic conductivity decrease. We also study the mass of the quasi-particle excitations, the gap frequency and the DC conductivities of the p-wave superconductor. All of them depend on the Gauss-Bonnet coefficient. In addition we observe a strange behavior for the condensation and the relation between the gap frequency and the mass of quasi-particles when the Gauss-Bonnet coefficient is larger than 9/100, which is the upper bound for the Gauss-Bonnet coefficient from the causality of the dual field theory.