Non-Equilibrium Field Dynamics of an Honest Holographic Superconductor

TL;DR

This paper develops a holographic model where a local boundary gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken, revealing gapless modes and parity breaking in a (1+1)-dimensional p-wave superconductor, with implications for holographic liquids.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic model with dynamical boundary gauge fields undergoing spontaneous symmetry-breaking, a novel approach in holographic superconductor studies.

Findings

Identification of non-trivial gapless modes in the broken phase

Demonstration of spontaneous parity breaking in the ground state

Realization of a (1+1)-dimensional p-wave superconductor in AdS3

Abstract

Most holographic models of superconducting systems neglect the effects of dynamical boundary gauge fields during the process of spontaneous symmetry-breaking. Usually a global symmetry gets broken. This yields a superfluid, which then is gauged "weakly" afterwards. In this work we build (and probe the dynamics of) a holographic model in which a local boundary symmetry is spontaneously broken instead. We compute two-point functions of dynamical non-Abelian gauge fields in the normal and in the broken phase, and find non-trivial gapless modes. Our AdS3 gravity dual realizes a p-wave superconductor in (1+1) dimensions. The ground state of this model also breaks (1+1)-dimensional parity spontaneously, while the Hamiltonian is parity-invariant. We discuss possible implications of our results for a wider class of holographic liquids.