The Schwarzschild-Black String AdS Soliton: Instability and Holographic Heat Transport

TL;DR

This paper investigates the holographic dual of a confining gauge theory using the AdS soliton geometry, analyzing stress-energy correlators, heat transport, and a classical instability indicating a deconfinement transition.

Contribution

It introduces a new holographic model with a Schwarzschild black hole foliation to study heat transport and deconfinement in confining gauge theories.

Findings

Stress-energy correlators decay exponentially, indicating confinement.

Heat transport is exponentially damped in the confined phase.

Identifies a Gregory-Laflamme-type instability signaling deconfinement transition.

Abstract

We present a calculation of two-point correlation functions of the stress-energy tensor in the strongly-coupled, confining gauge theory which is holographically dual to the AdS soliton geometry. The fact that the AdS soliton smoothly caps off at a certain point along the holographic direction, ensures that these correlators are dominated by quasinormal mode contributions and thus show an exponential decay in position space. In order to study such a field theory on a curved spacetime, we foliate the six-dimensional AdS soliton with a Schwarzschild black hole. Via gauge/gravity duality, this new geometry describes a confining field theory with supersymmetry breaking boundary conditions on a non-dynamical Schwarzschild black hole background. We also calculate stress-energy correlators for this setting, thus demonstrating exponentially damped heat transport. This analysis is valid in the confined phase. We model a deconfinement transition by explicitly demonstrating a classical instability of Gregory-Laflamme-type of this bulk spacetime.