Recent experiments have uncovered evidence of the strongly coupled nature of the graphene: the Wiedemann-Franz law is violated by up to a factor of 20 near the charge neutral point. We describe this strongly-coupled plasma by a holographic model in which there are two distinct conserved U(1) currents. We find that our analytic results for the transport coefficients for two current model have a significantly improved match to the density dependence of the experimental data than the models with only one current. The additive structure in the transports coefficients plays an important role. We also suggest the origin of the two currents.
The electron-hole plasma in charge-neutral graphene is predicted to realize a quantum critical system whose transport features a universal hydrodynamic description, even at room temperature. This quantum critical Dirac fluid is expected to have a shear viscosity close to a minimum bound, with an inter-particle scattering rate saturating at the Planckian time $hbar/(k_B T)$. While electrical transport measurements at finite carrier density are consistent with hydrodynamic electron flow in graphene, a smoking gun of viscous behavior remains elusive. In this work, we directly image viscous Dirac fluid flow in graphene at room temperature via measurement of the associated stray magnetic field. Nanoscale magnetic imaging is performed using quantum spin magnetometers realized with nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. Scanning single-spin and wide-field magnetometry reveals a parabolic Poiseuille profile for electron flow in a graphene channel near the charge neutrality point, establishing the viscous transport of the Dirac fluid. This measurement is in contrast to the conventional uniform flow profile imaged in an Ohmic conductor. Via combined imaging-transport measurements, we obtain viscosity and scattering rates, and observe that these quantities are comparable to the universal values expected at quantum criticality. This finding establishes a nearly-ideal electron fluid in neutral graphene at room temperature. Our results pave the way to study hydrodynamic transport in quantum critical fluids relevant to strongly-correlated electrons in high-$T_c$ superconductors. This work also highlights the capability of quantum spin magnetometers to probe correlated-electronic phenomena at the nanoscale.
Quantum decoherence is the loss of a systems purity due to its interaction with the surrounding environment. Via the AdS/CFT correspondence, we study how a system decoheres when its environment is a strongly-coupled theory. In the Feynman-Vernon formalism, we compute the influence functional holographically by relating it to the generating function of Schwinger-Keldysh propagators and thereby obtain the dynamics of the systems density matrix. We present two exactly solvable examples: (1) a straight string in a BTZ black hole and (2) a scalar probe in AdS$_5$. We prepare an initial state that mimics Schrodingers cat and identify different stages of its decoherence process using the time-scaling behaviors of Renyi entropy. We also relate decoherence to local quantum quenches, and by comparing the time evolution behaviors of the Wigner function and Renyi entropy we demonstrate that the relaxation of local quantum excitations leads to the collapse of its wave-function.
Negative magnetoresistivity is a special magnetotransport property associated with chiral anomaly in four dimensional chiral anomalous systems, which refers to the transport behavior that the DC longitudinal magnetoresistivity decreases with increasing magnetic field. We calculate the longitudinal magnetoconductivity in the presence of backreactions of the magnetic field to gravity in holographic zero charge and axial charge density systems with and without axial charge dissipation. In the absence of axial charge dissipation, we find that the quantum critical conductivity grows with increasing magnetic field when the backreaction strength is larger than a critical value, in contrast to the monotonically decreasing behavior of quantum critical conductivity in the probe limit. With axial charge dissipation, we find the negative magnetoresistivity behavior. The DC longitudinal magnetoconductivity scales as $B$ in the large magnetic field limit, which deviates from the exact $B^2$ scaling of the probe limit result. In both cases, the small frequency longitudinal magnetoconductivity still agrees with the formula obtained from the hydrodynamic linear response theory, even in the large magnetic field limit.
We study nonequilibrium steady states in a holographic superconductor under time periodic driving by an external rotating electric field. We obtain the dynamical phase diagram. Superconducting phase transition is of first or second order depending on the amplitude and frequency of the external source. The rotating electric field decreases the superconducting transition temperature. The system can also exhibit a first order transition inside the superconducting phase. It is suggested this transition exists all the way down to zero temperature. The existence of nonequilibrium thermodynamic potential for such steady solutions is also discussed from the holographic point of view. The current induced by the electric field is decomposed into normal and superconducting components, and this makes it clear that the superconducting one dominates in low temperatures.
We study the spontaneous magnetization and the magnetic hysteresis using the gauge/gravity duality. We first propose a novel and general formula to compute the magnetization in a large class of holographic models. By using this formula, we compute the spontaneous magnetization in a model like a holographic superconductor. Furthermore, we turn on the external magnetic field and build the hysteresis curve of magnetization and charge density. To our knowledge, this is the first holographic model realizing the hysteresis accompanied with spontaneous symmetry breaking. By considering the Landau-Ginzburg type effective potential in the symmetry broken phase, we obtain the mass of the magnon from the bulk geometry data.