Holographic Superfluids and Superconductors in Dilaton-Gravity

Abstract

We investigate holographic models of superfluids and superconductors in which the gravitational theory includes a dilatonic field. Dilaton extensions are interesting as they allow us to obtain a better description of low temperature condensed matter systems. We focus on asymptotically AdS black hole configurations, which are dual to field theories with conformal ultraviolet behavior. A nonvanishing value of the dilaton breaks scale invariance in the infrared and is therefore compatible with the normal phase being insulating (or a solid in the fluid mechanical interpretation); indeed we find that this is the case at low temperatures and if one appropriately chooses the parameters of the model. Not only the superfluid phase transitions, but also the response to external gauge fields is analyzed. This allows us to study, among other things, the vortex phase and to show that these holographic superconductors are also of Type II. However, at low temperatures they can behave in a qualitatively different way compared to their analogues without the dilaton: the critical magnetic fields and the penetration depth can remain finite in the small T/T_c limit.