No Arabic abstract
We study the thermal expectation value of the following observeable at finite temperature T and chemical potential mu : < L_{12} L_{34} ... L_{d-3,d-2} P_{d-1} > where L_{ij} denote the angular momenta, and P_i denotes the spatial momentum in d spacetime dimensions with d even. We call this observeable the thermal helicity. Using a variety of arguments, we motivate the surprising assertion that thermal helicity per unit volume is a polynomial in T and mu. Further, in field theories without chiral gravitino, we conjecture that this polynomial can be derived from the anomaly polynomial of the theory. We show that this conjecture is related to the recent conjecture on gravitational anomaly induced transport made in arXiv:1201.2812 . We support these statements by various sphere partition function computations in free theories.
Using the anomaly inflow mechanism, we compute the flavor/Lorentz non-invariant contribution to the partition function in a background with a U(1) isometry. This contribution is a local functional of the background fields. By identifying the U(1) isometry with Euclidean time we obtain a contribution of the anomaly to the thermodynamic partition function from which hydrostatic correlators can be efficiently computed. Our result is in line with, and an extension of, previous studies on the role of anomalies in a hydrodynamic setting. Along the way we find simplified expressions for Bardeen-Zumino polynomials and various transgression formulae
We calculate the thermal diffusion constant $D_T$ and butterfly velocity $v_B$ in neutral magnetized plasma using holographic magnetic brane background. We find the thermal diffusion constant satisfies Blakes bound. The constant in the bound $D_T2pi T/v_B^2$ is a decreasing function of magnetic field. It approaches one half in the large magnetic field limit. We also find the existence of a special point defined by Lyapunov exponent and butterfly velocity on which pole-skipping phenomenon occurs.
We study the thermal helicity, defined in arXiv:1211.3850, of a conformal field theory with anomalies in the context of AdS$_{2n+1}$/CFT$_{2n}$. To do so, we consider large charged rotating AdS black holes in the Einstein-Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory with a negative cosmological constant using fluid/gravity expansion. We compute the anomaly-induced current and stress tensor of the dual CFT in leading order of the fluid/gravity derivative expansion and show their agreement with the field theoretical replacement rule for the thermal helicity. Such replacement rule is reflected in the bulk by new replacement rules obeyed by the Hall currents around the black hole.
We study spectral and thermodynamic properties of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, a variant of the $k$-body embedded random ensembles studied for several decades in the context of nuclear physics and quantum chaos. We show analytically that the fourth and sixth order energy cumulants vanish in the limit of large number of particles $N to infty$ which is consistent with a Gaussian spectral density. However, for finite $N$, the tail of the average spectral density is well approximated by a semi-circle law. The specific heat coefficient, determined numerically from the low temperature behavior of the partition function, is consistent with the value obtained by previous analytical calculations. For energy scales of the order of the mean level spacing we show that level statistics are well described by random matrix theory. Due to the underlying Clifford algebra of the model, the universality class of the spectral correlations depends on $N$. For larger energy separations we identify an energy scale that grows with $N$, reminiscent of the Thouless energy in mesoscopic physics, where deviations from random matrix theory are observed. Our results are a further confirmation that the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model is quantum chaotic for all time scales. According to recent claims in the literature, this is an expected feature in field theories with a gravity-dual.
We investigate a higher-group structure of massless axion electrodynamics in $(3+1)$ dimensions. By using the background gauging method, we show that the higher-form symmetries necessarily have a global semistrict 3-group (2-crossed module) structure, and exhibit t Hooft anomalies of the 3-group. In particular, we find a cubic mixed t Hooft anomaly between 0-form and 1-form symmetries, which is specific to the higher-group structure.