Steady States of Holographic Interfaces

TL;DR

This paper constructs stationary holographic interface models that describe far-from-equilibrium steady states, revealing how heat flow and entropy production behave in these systems and identifying phase transition effects on thermal conductivity.

Contribution

It introduces new stationary thin-brane geometries dual to non-equilibrium steady states of holographic interfaces, analyzing their horizons, entropy, and phase transition behavior.

Findings

Heat flow matches CFT predictions and known transport coefficients.

Interface entanglement produces maximal coarse-grained entropy.

Thermal conductivity jumps at the Hawking-Page transition.

Abstract

We find stationary thin-brane geometries that are dual to far-from-equilibrium steady states of two-dimensional holographic interfaces. The flow of heat at the boundary agrees with the result of CFT and the known energy-transport coefficients of the thin-brane model. We argue that by entangling outgoing excitations the interface produces coarse-grained entropy at a maximal rate, and point out similarities and differences with double-sided black funnels. The non-compact, non-Killing and far from-equilibrium event horizon of our solutions coincides with the local (apparent) horizon on the colder side, but lies behind it on the hotter side of the interface. We also show that the thermal conductivity of a pair of interfaces jumps at the Hawking-Page phase transition from a regime described by classical scatterers to a quantum regime in which heat flows unobstructed.