Emergent Lifshitz scaling from N=4 SYM with supersymmetric heavy-quark density

TL;DR

This paper constructs supersymmetric Type IIB supergravity backgrounds with heavy-quark density in N=4 SYM, revealing solutions with Lifshitz-like scaling and a deformation of AdS_5 x S^5 due to string backreaction.

Contribution

It derives the most general BPS solutions with heavy-quark density in N=4 SYM, showing Lifshitz scaling with z=7 and connecting to deformed AdS backgrounds.

Findings

Solutions exhibit Lifshitz-like scaling with z=7.

Backreacted solutions include a uniform heavy-quark density.

The equations reduce to a single Poisson-like equation for the dilaton.

Abstract

We consider supersymmetric configurations in Type IIB supergravity obtained by the beackreaction of fundamental strings ending on a stack of D3-branes and smeared uniformly in the three spatial directions along the D3-branes. These automatically include a distribution of D5-brane baryon vertices necessary to soak up string charge. The backgrounds are static, preserving eight supersymmetries, an SO(5) global symmetry and symmetry under spatial translations and rotations. We obtain the most general BPS configurations consistent with the symmetries. We show that the solutions to the Type IIB field equations are completely specified by a single function (the dilaton) satisfying a Poisson-like equation in two dimensions. We further find that the equation admits a class of solutions displaying Lifshitz-like scaling with dynamical critical exponent z=7. The equations also admit an asymptotically AdS_5 x S^5 solution deformed by the presence of backreacted string sources that yield a uniform density of heavy quarks in N=4 SYM.