A New Phase at Finite Quark Density from AdS/CFT

TL;DR

This paper investigates the phase structure of N=2 super Yang-Mills theory at finite quark density using AdS/CFT, revealing a new first order phase transition in the deconfined quark region with complex thermodynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel phase transition at finite quark density in a holographic model, with detailed thermodynamic analysis and renormalization procedures.

Findings

Identification of a new first order phase transition in quark density

Complex equation of state with rich structure

Decreasing chemical potential with increasing density in the new phase

Abstract

We explore phases of N=2 super Yang-Mills theory at finite quark density by introducing quark chemical potential in a D3-D7 setup. We formulate the thermodynamics of brane embeddings and find that we need to renormalize the finite chemical potential due to the divergence of the thermodynamic potentials and we find that the density versus chemical potential equation of state has rich structure. This yields two distinct first order phase transitions in a small window of quark density. In order words, there is a new first order phase transition in the region of deconfined quarks. In this new phase, the chemical potential is a decreasing function of the density. We suggest that this might be relevant to the difference in sQGP--wQGP phases of QCD.