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Aspects of strongly-coupled field theory from gauge-gravity duality

Aspects of strongly-coupled field theory from gauge-gravity duality
Aspects of strongly-coupled field theory from gauge-gravity duality
The issue of calculating at strong coupling is a hard problem in physics. The discovery of gauge-gravity duality at the end of the Twentieth Century provides a novel means of calculating in a large-N gauge theory at strong coupling. In this thesis we apply the method of gauge-gravity duality to a variety of questions. Firstly we review the string theory background material and then introduce the gauge-gravity duality. We discuss the procedure for adding fundamental representation matter to gravity duals. We present a method for calculating the quasinormal frequencies associated to mesonlike excitations in non-zero temperature gravity duals and apply it to excitations of bosonic and fermionic type. We study the thermal phase transition in a somewhat QCD-like gravity dual deformed by the presence of a relevant operator and find a plausible transition between a QCD-like confining phase and a high temperature phase which is just the generic black hole geometry. Finally we examine the effect of chemical potential on the behaviour of fundamental representation matter in a gravity dual and look for superconductivity-like behaviour.
University of Southampton
Threlfall, Edward James
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Threlfall, Edward James
c023698e-7b52-458a-ba54-87de7d86ad0c
Evans, N.
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Threlfall, Edward James (2009) Aspects of strongly-coupled field theory from gauge-gravity duality. University of Southampton, School of Physics & Astronomy, Doctoral Thesis, 184pp.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

The issue of calculating at strong coupling is a hard problem in physics. The discovery of gauge-gravity duality at the end of the Twentieth Century provides a novel means of calculating in a large-N gauge theory at strong coupling. In this thesis we apply the method of gauge-gravity duality to a variety of questions. Firstly we review the string theory background material and then introduce the gauge-gravity duality. We discuss the procedure for adding fundamental representation matter to gravity duals. We present a method for calculating the quasinormal frequencies associated to mesonlike excitations in non-zero temperature gravity duals and apply it to excitations of bosonic and fermionic type. We study the thermal phase transition in a somewhat QCD-like gravity dual deformed by the presence of a relevant operator and find a plausible transition between a QCD-like confining phase and a high temperature phase which is just the generic black hole geometry. Finally we examine the effect of chemical potential on the behaviour of fundamental representation matter in a gravity dual and look for superconductivity-like behaviour.

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Published date: September 2009
Organisations: University of Southampton

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 72370
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/72370
PURE UUID: 7dd77e89-4a82-44a8-acd2-60be2b654985

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Date deposited: 09 Feb 2010
Last modified: 13 Mar 2024 21:26

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Contributors

Author: Edward James Threlfall
Thesis advisor: N. Evans

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