English

Diving inside holographic metals

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-05-13 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We investigate the gravitational dual of a fermionic field theory at finite temperature and charge density in two spatial dimensions, subject to a deformation by a relevant scalar operator. This makes a (3+1)(3+1)-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell system coupled to a free fermion fluid, known as an electron cloud, undergo a holographic renormalization group flow. The inner (Cauchy) horizon is destroyed and the near-singularity metric instead adopts the form of a positive-ptp_t Kasner cosmology, signaling the collapse of the Einstein-Rosen bridge. Previous studies have suggested that this collapse hinders direct probing of the singularity. Nonetheless, we propose and compute several CFT observables that characterize the interior and near-singularity geometries. These include the thermal aa-function, which decays with a specific power of ptp_t as nearly all CFT degrees of freedom are integrated out, and two-point correlators for neutral and charged operators, with the latter directly probing the singularity despite the positive-ptp_t. We also calculate characteristic velocities related to entanglement and complexity growth in the time-evolved thermofield double state, as well as the butterfly effect indicative of operator spreading. Notably, the deformed electron cloud features a Lifshitz IR fixed point and an additional Kasner trans-IR fixed point, absent in neutral RG flows.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.07748,
  title  = {Diving inside holographic metals},
  author = {Javier Carballo and Ayan K. Patra and Juan F. Pedraza},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.07748},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

29 pages, 15 figures; v2: additional citations added

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:13:09.566Z