Emergent Quantum Near-Criticality from Baryonic Black Branes

Abstract

We find new black 3-brane solutions describing the "conifold gauge theory" at nonzero temperature and baryonic chemical potential. Of particular interest is the low-temperature limit where we find a new kind of weakly curved near-horizon geometry; it is a warped product AdS_2 x R^3 x T^{1,1} with warp factors that are powers of the logarithm of the AdS radius. Thus, our solution encodes a new type of emergent quantum near-criticality. We carry out some stability checks for our solutions. We also set up a consistent ansatz for baryonic black 2-branes of M-theory that are asymptotic to AdS_4 x Q^{1,1,1}.

29 pages, 4 figures; v2 discussion of entropy revised, minor changes; v3 note added, minor improvements, version published in JHEP