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Physical Review D

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Emergent quantum criticality, Fermi surfaces, and ${AdS}_{2}$

Thomas Faulkner¹, Hong Liu¹, John McGreevy^1,2, and David Vegh¹

¹Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
²KITP, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA

Phys. Rev. D 83, 125002 – Published 1 June, 2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.83.125002

Abstract

Gravity solutions dual to $d$ -dimensional field theories at finite charge density have a near-horizon region, which is ${AdS}_{2} \times R^{d - 1}$ . The scale invariance of the ${AdS}_{2}$ region implies that at low energies the dual field theory exhibits emergent quantum critical behavior controlled by a ( $0 + 1$ )-dimensional conformal field theories (CFT). This interpretation sheds light on recently-discovered holographic descriptions of Fermi surfaces, allowing an analytic understanding of their low-energy excitations. For example, the scaling behavior near the Fermi surfaces is determined by conformal dimensions in the emergent IR CFT. In particular, when the operator is marginal in the IR CFT, the corresponding spectral function is precisely of the “marginal Fermi liquid” form, postulated to describe the optimally doped cuprates.

See Also

Charge transport by holographic Fermi surfaces

Thomas Faulkner, Nabil Iqbal, Hong Liu, John McGreevy, and David Vegh

Phys. Rev. D 88, 045016 (2013)

Article Text

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