Heavy quark density in N=4 SYM: from hedgehog to Lifshitz spacetimes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a high density of heavy quarks affects the geometry of spacetime in a strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theory, revealing a flow from AdS to Lifshitz-like geometries with specific thermodynamic properties.

Contribution

It introduces a supergravity dual model with smeared string sources to study the backreaction of heavy quark density, uncovering a flow from AdS to Lifshitz-like spacetime with a black brane solution.

Findings

Flow from AdS_5 to Lifshitz-like geometry with z=7

Exact black brane solution describing low temperature thermodynamics

Logarithmic running dilaton breaks scaling symmetry

Abstract

We study the effect of an order N^2 density of heavy quarks in strongly coupled N=4 SUSY Yang-Mills theory in the large N limit. This is achieved in the type IIB supergravity dual by introducing a uniformly smeared density of macroscopic string sources stretching to the boundary of AdS_5 x S^5. The backreacted system exhibits a flow from an AdS_5 "hedgehog" geometry to a scaling Lifshitz-like solution Lif_5 x S^5 with dynamical critical exponent z=7, wherein the scaling symmetry is broken by a logarithmic running dilaton. We find an exact black brane solution within the scaling regime which describes the low temperature thermodynamics of the system.