Abelian-Higgs and Vortices from ABJM: towards a string realization of AdS/CMT

TL;DR

This paper reduces the mass-deformed ABJM model to Abelian scalar theories, embedding vortex solutions and Landau-Ginzburg models into AdS/CFT, providing a string-theoretic realization of condensed matter phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces new ansätze for reducing ABJM to Abelian theories, finds novel nonabelian vortices, and connects these to condensed matter models within the AdS/CFT framework.

Findings

Embedded multi-vortex solutions into ABJM.

Connected Landau-Ginzburg models with ABJM via continuous deformation.

Proposed a string-theoretic model for condensed matter field theories.

Abstract

We present ans\"{a}tze that reduce the mass-deformed ABJM model to gauged Abelian scalar theories, using the fuzzy sphere matrices $G^\alpha$. One such reduction gives a Toda system, for which we find a new type of nonabelian vortex. Another gives the standard Abelian-Higgs model, thereby allowing us to embed all the usual (multi-)vortex solutions of the latter into the ABJM model. By turning off the mass deformation at the level of the reduced model, we can also continuously deform to the massive $\phi^4$ theory in the massless ABJM case. In this way we can embed the Landau-Ginzburg model into the AdS/CFT correspondence as a consistent truncation of ABJM. In this context, the mass deformation parameter $\mu$ and a field VEV $<\phi>$ act as $g$ and $g_c$ respectively, leading to a well-motivated AdS/CMT construction from string theory. To further this particular point, we propose a simple model for the condensed matter field theory that leads to an approximate description for the ABJM abelianization. Finally, we also find some BPS solutions to the mass-deformed ABJM model with a spacetime interpretation as an M2-brane ending on a spherical M5-brane.