Holographic Strange Metals for Philosophers and Physicists
Abstract
This paper introduces the physics and philosophy of strange metals, which are characterized by unusual electrical and thermal properties that deviate from conventional metallic behaviour. The anomalous strange-metal behaviour discussed here appears in the normal state of a copper-oxide high-temperature superconductor, and it cannot be described using standard condensed-matter physics. Currently, it can only be described through a holographic dual, viz.~a four-dimensional black hole in anti-de Sitter spacetime. This paper first introduces the theory of, and specific experiments carried out on, strange metals. Then it discusses a number of philosophical questions that strange metals open up regarding the experimental evidence for holography and its realist interpretation. Strange metals invert the explanatory arrows, in that usual holographic arguments are seen as giving explanations of the bulk quantum-gravity theory from the boundary. By contrast, the aim here is, by using holography, to explain the experimentally discovered and anomalous properties of strange metals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.23527,
title = {Holographic Strange Metals for Philosophers and Physicists},
author = {Enrico Cinti and Sebastian De Haro and Mark Golden and Umut Gürsoy and Henk T. C. Stoof},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.23527},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
We dedicate this paper to the memory of Umut G\"ursoy, who tragically passed away on 24 April 2025, during the last stages of the paper's completion