Thermodynamics of anisotropic branes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how anisotropy in a black brane background influences the thermodynamics and phase transitions of embedded flavor D7-branes, revealing that anisotropy mimics temperature effects and affects the nature of the phase transition.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the phase transition behavior of flavor D7-branes in anisotropic backgrounds, highlighting the role of anisotropy in modifying thermodynamic properties.

Findings

Anisotropy induces effects similar to temperature on brane embeddings.

Higher anisotropy smooths the phase transition.

Branes tend to fall into the horizon more with increased anisotropy.

Abstract

We study the thermodynamics of flavor D7-branes embedded in an anisotropic black brane solution of type IIB supergravity. The flavor branes undergo a phase transition between a `Minkowski embedding', in which they lie outside of the horizon, and a `black hole embedding', in which they fall into the horizon. This transition depends on the black hole temperature, its degree of anisotropy, and the mass of the flavor degrees of freedom. It happens either at a critical temperature or at a critical anisotropy. A general lesson we learn from this analysis is that the anisotropy, in this particular realization, induces similar effects as the temperature. In particular, increasing the anisotropy bends the branes more and more into the horizon. Moreover, we observe that the transition becomes smoother for higher anisotropies.