Quark-Antiquark Potential as a Probe for Holographic Phase Transitions

TL;DR

This paper explores how the quark-antiquark potential can be used as a holographic probe to detect phase transitions between different black hole solutions in a higher-dimensional gravity theory, providing insights into the dual gauge theory behavior.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the quark-antiquark potential effectively signals phase transitions in holographic models, offering a new method to study black hole phase behavior via string probes.

Findings

Quark-antiquark potential changes indicate phase transition points.

String probe detects different black hole phases.

Potential varies with chemical potential to temperature ratio.

Abstract

In the recent paper (Phys.Rev.Lett. 133 (2024) 12, 121601), a higher-order phase transition between the planar, charged, 5-dimensional Reissner-Nordstr\"om-Anti-de Sitter black hole and a hairy black hole solution of the type IIB supergravity was investigated. Here, we set out to investigate these two phases of the theory by means of the holographic probe that describes a quark-antiquark in the dual gauge theory. We show that the study of the quark-antiquark potential turns out to be a useful method to investigate the change of behavior at different values of the parameter that controls the phase transition, this parameter being the ratio between the chemical potential and the temperature. In other words, the string serves as a probe to detect the phase transition.