The moduli space of striped black branes

TL;DR

This paper explores the space of inhomogeneous black brane solutions in AdS holography, revealing how stripe patterns evolve with temperature and their thermodynamic properties.

Contribution

It constructs the continuous moduli space of striped black branes and analyzes the temperature dependence of their dominant configurations.

Findings

Stripe size increases as temperature decreases.

Dominant solutions minimize free energy at each temperature.

Thermodynamic properties of the striped phases are characterized.

Abstract

At finite charge density certain holographic models exhibit the spontaneous breaking of translational invariance resulting in an inhomogeneous phase. We follow up on recent numerical work, reporting results for a larger class of cohomogeneity two black branes in AdS, dual to a holographic striped phase. We construct the continuous moduli space of inhomogeneous black branes as a function of the temperature. Minimising the free energy we determine the dominant striped solutions, revealing a growth in the stripe size as the system is cooled. We discuss the thermodynamic properties of this line of solutions.