High Energy Theory Seminar

We will start out with a brief review of recent holographic studies of fermions. Then using a D3/D5-brane construction, a generic string theory dual to recently discussed (non)Fermi liquid behavior will be derived. On the field theory side, spectral functions of fermionic operators in a strongly coupled defect field theory in its p-wave superfluid phase are examined. To be more precise, this example is (3+1)-dimensional N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in the 't Hooft limit, coupled to two massless flavors of (2+1)-dimensional N=4 supersymmetric matter. Parameters such as mass and charge of the fermionic operators are fixed by supersymmetry and T-duality. We are going to discover (non)Fermi-liquid behavior, as well as an interesting similarity to an experimentally accessible ruthenate compound p-wave superconductor: The Fermi surface apparently reduces to isolated points as we cool the system below the superfluid phase transition.