Holographic superconductor with multiple competing condensates

Holography is a novel approach to modeling strongly interacting many-body systems. By reorganizing the quantum many-body problem into an equivalent problem in classical gravity, holography makes it relatively easy, for example, to study linear response and compute transport coefficients. These techniques have recently been used to build toy models of superconductivity known as "Holographic Superconductors". In this thesis, we will be applying these same holographic principles to a strongly-interacting superconducting system in which multiple condensates compete. In the gravitational description, our system begins with two non-interacting Abelian Higgs multiplets, each comprised of a vector and a charged scalar. This describes a system with two independent condensates. Coupling the scalars via a quartic interaction induces a competition between the two condensates, with a condensate of one operator suppressing or enhancing the other depending on the sign of the coupling.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Grabowska, Dorota M

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Allan Adams.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/61205

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/61205