Signals of a new phase in N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 gauge theory with a magnetic field on the three-sphere

Abstract

Abstract:We study the effect of a magnetic field on N = 2 super-Yang-Mills on S 3 at strong coupling using the gauge/gravity correspondence. As in previous work that dealt with the theory in infinite volume, we find that increasing the magnetic field pushes the system into the confined phase. However, we in addition also find that, within the class of configurations with the same symmetry as those which describe the ground state at vanishing magnetic field, a mass gap appears in the spectrum. This suggests the existence of a new phase with so far unexplored symmetry structure. We provide suggestions for the physical properties of this phase.

Critical point in a holographic defect field theory

“…The dual field theory has fundamental flavours confined to a maximal two-sphere within the three-sphere where the field theory lives. Introducing external magnetic field to the dual field theory corresponds to the introduction of a magnetic monopole [6] in the world volume of the probe D5-brane, which prohibits embeddings wrapping a shrinking two-sphere within the AdS 5 subspace, unless D3-branes sourcing the monopole are attached. Remarkably these D3-branes are dynamically realised as throats by Mikowski D5-brane embeddings.…”