Baryon Superfluids in AdS/CFT with Flavor

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of light baryons at finite density within a holographic QCD model, revealing a new phase characterized by spontaneous baryon symmetry breaking at zero temperature.

Contribution

It introduces a gauge/gravity duality framework for analyzing light baryons in theories with a hadronic mass gap, highlighting a novel phase with spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Findings

Discovery of a new phase with baryon symmetry breaking

Demonstration of finite baryon density effects in holographic models

Identification of conditions for light baryons in large-N theories

Abstract

Baryonic matter is notoriously difficult to deal with in the large-N limit, as baryons become operators of very large dimension with N fields in the fundamental representation. This issue is also present in gauge/gravity duals as baryons are described by very heavy localized objects. There are however alternative large-N extrapolations of QCD where small baryonic operators exist and can be treated on an equal footing to mesons. We explore the possibility of turning on a finite density of "light" baryons in a theory with a hadronic mass gap using a gauge/gravity construction based on the D3/D7 intersection. We find a novel phase with spontaneous breaking of baryon symmetry at zero temperature.