English

Magnetic Response in the Holographic Insulator/Superconductor Transition

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-06-04 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Gases Superconductivity General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We study the magnetic response of holographic superconductors exhibiting an insulating "normal" phase. These materials can be realized as a CFT compactified on a circle, which is dual to the AdS Soliton geometry. We study the response under i) magnetic fields and ii) a Wilson line on the circle. Magnetic fields lead to formation of vortices and allows one to infer that the superconductor is of type II. The response to a Wilson line is in the form of Aharonov-Bohm-like effects. These are suppressed in the holographic conductor/superconductor transition but, instead, they are unsuppressed for the insulator case. Holography, thus, predicts that generically insulators display stronger Aharonov-Bohm effects than conductors. In the fluid-mechanical limit the AdS Soliton is interpreted as a supersolid. Our results imply that supersolids display unsuppressed Aharonov-Bohm (or "Sagnac") effects - stronger than in superfluids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1202.0006,
  title  = {Magnetic Response in the Holographic Insulator/Superconductor Transition},
  author = {Marc Montull and Oriol Pujolàs and Alberto Salvio and Pedro J. Silva},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.0006},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

31 pages, 24 figures; discussion on vortex lattice, few comments and references added; article published in JHEP