Publications by authors named "Christopher P Herzog"

Even dimensional defects and boundaries in conformal field theory support type a anomalies on their world volume. We show that the one-point functions of marginal operators, in the presence of defects and boundaries, are anomalous, and that the Wess-Zumino consistency condition relates them to the derivative of the a anomaly with respect to the marginal coupling. We also argue that the constant term F for odd dimensional surfaces can depend on marginal parameters.

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We consider single interval Rényi and entanglement entropies for a two dimensional conformal field theory on a circle at nonzero temperature. Assuming that the finite size of the system introduces a unique ground state with a nonzero mass gap, we calculate the leading corrections to the Rényi and entanglement entropy in a low temperature expansion. These corrections have a universal form for any two dimensional conformal field theory that depends only on the size of the mass gap and its degeneracy.

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We establish that in a large class of strongly coupled (3+1)-dimensional N=1 quiver conformal field theories with gravity duals, adding a chemical potential for the R charge leads to the existence of superfluid states in which a chiral primary operator of the schematic form O=lambdalambda+W condenses. Here lambda is a gluino and W is the superpotential. Our argument is based on the construction of a consistent truncation of type IIB supergravity that includes a U(1) gauge field and a complex scalar.

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We show that a simple gravitational theory can provide a holographically dual description of a superconductor. There is a critical temperature, below which a charged condensate forms via a second order phase transition and the (dc) conductivity becomes infinite. The frequency dependent conductivity develops a gap determined by the condensate.

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We argue that deconfinement in anti-de Sitter space models of quantum chromodynamics (AdS/QCD models) occurs via a first order Hawking-Page type phase transition between low temperature thermal AdS and a high temperature black hole. Such a result is consistent with the expected temperature independence, to leading order in 1/Nc, of the meson spectrum and spatial Wilson loops below the deconfinement temperature. As a by-product, we obtain model dependent deconfinement temperatures Tc in the hard- and soft-wall models of AdS/QCD.

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