The zig-zag symmetry transition is a phase transition in 1D quantum wires, in which a Wigner lattice of electrons transitions to two staggered lattices. Previous studies model this transition as a Luttinger liquid coupled to a Majorana fermion. The m
odel exhibits interesting RG flows, involving quenching of velocities in subsectors of the theory. We suggest an extension of the model which replaces the Majorana fermion by a more general CFT; this includes an experimentally realizable case with two Majorana fermions. We analyse the RG flow both in field theory and using AdS/CFT techniques in the large central charge limit of the CFT. The model has a rich phase structure with new qualitative features, already in the two Majorana fermion case. The AdS/CFT calculation involves considering back reaction in space-time to capture subleading effects.
Stationary solutions of 5D supergravity with U(1) isometry can be efficiently studied by dimensional reduction to three dimensions, where they reduce to solutions to a locally supersymmetric non-linear sigma model. We generalize this procedure to 5D
gauged supergravity, and identify the corresponding gauging in 3D. We pay particular attention to the case where the Killing spinor is non constant along the fibration, which results, even for ungauged supergravity in 5D, in an additional gauging in 3D, without introducing any extra potential. We further study SU(2)times U(1) symmetric solutions, which correspond to geodesic motion on the sigma model (with potential in the gauged case). We identify and study the algebra of BPS constraints relevant for the Breckenridge-Myers-Peet-Vafa black hole, the Gutowski-Reall black hole and several other BPS solutions, and obtain the corresponding radial wave functions in the semi-classical approximation.
