English

The gravity dual of a p-wave superconductor

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-12-10 v2

Abstract

We construct black hole solutions to the Yang-Mills equations in an AdS_4-Schwarzschild background which exhibit superconductivity. What makes these backgrounds p-wave superconductors is that the order parameter is a vector, and the conductivities are strongly anisotropic in a manner that is suggestive of a gap with nodes. The low-lying excitations of the normal state have a relaxation time which grows rapidly as the temperature decreases, consistent with the absence of impurity scattering. A numerical exploration of quasinormal modes close to the transition temperature suggests that p-wave backgrounds are stable against perturbations analogous to turning on a p+ip gap, whereas p+ip-wave configurations are unstable against turning into pure p-wave backgrounds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0805.2960,
  title  = {The gravity dual of a p-wave superconductor},
  author = {Steven S. Gubser and Silviu S. Pufu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0805.2960},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

39 pages, 7 figures. v2: added discussion of conductivity matrix and made minor changes