We will investigate a simple yet extremely rich holographic model which exhibits both
color superconductivity and superfluidity when a certain combination of conserved charges
is taken to be large. Our model differs from QCD in many respects, including the fact that
it is supersymmetric, that it exhibits no chiral symmetry and hence no pions, and that it
possesses an R-symmetry that is absent in QCD. Therefore we do not claim that our results
have any direct implications for real-world QCD. However, we believe that they are interest-
ing for three reasons. First, they show that color superconductivity does appear in hologra-
phy when some conserved charges are large (in this case a combination of isospin charge and
R-charge). Second, we expect that a similar holographic mechanism will give rise to color
superconductivity in the presence of baryon density [10]. Third, to the best of our knowl-
edge our model is the first example of a supersymmetric color superconductor. Color su-
perconductivity in supersymmetric theories has been previously considered in e.g. [11–13],
but in these cases all the supersymmetries are broken by the ground state. In contrast,
in our model the ground state leaves some supersymmetry unbroken. We expect that this
property will facilitate a precise comparison between the strong-coupling limit described by
holography and the weak-coupling regime accessible via perturbative field theory methods.
Color superconductivity in the holographic context has been previously explored.
Refs. [14, 15] considered baryon density instead of isospin density, ref. [16] studied a bottom-
up model instead of a top-down model, and refs. [17, 18] mimicked the breaking of the color
symmetry as the breaking of a global symmetry.
2 Model
Type IIB string theory on the near-horizon geometry of N
c
D3-branes and N
f
D7-branes is
dual to d = 4, N = 4, SU(N
c
) super Yang-Mills theory coupled to N
f
hypermultiplets in the
fundamental representation. The presence of the hypermultiplets breaks supersymmetry
to N = 2, so we will refer to this theory simply as “the N = 2 gauge theory”. Although
the hypermultiplets contain both bosons and fermions, we will loosely refer to them as
“flavors” or “quarks”. In the regime N
f
N
c
the D7-branes can be treated as probes [19]
in the AdS
5
× S
5
geometry
ds
2
= H
−
1
2
−dt
2
+ d~x
2
+ H
1
2
dy
2
i
+ dz
2
α
, (2.1)
where t, ~x are the four gauge theory directions parallel to the D3-branes, y
i
with i = 1, . . . , 4
are the coordinates along the D7-branes orthogonal to the D3-branes, and z
α
with α = 1, 2
are the coordinates orthogonal to both sets of branes. We will often write the metric in
the y
i
directions in spherical coordinates as
dy
2
i
= dr
2
+ r
2
ω
2
1
+ ω
2
2
+ ω
2
3
, (2.2)
where ω
n
are the left-invariant forms on S
3
. H is the usual harmonic function in the
six-dimensional space transverse to the D3-branes:
H =
L
4
r
2
+ z
2
1
+ z
2
2
2
, (2.3)
with L the radius of AdS
5
and S
5
.
– 2 –