Tameem Albash

A holographic superconductor in an external magnetic field

We study a system of a complex charged scalar coupled to a Reissner-Nordstr?m black hole in 3+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime, neglecting back-reaction. With suitable boundary conditions, the cases of a neutral and purely electric black hole have been studied in various limits and were shown to yield key elements of superconductivity in the dual 2+1 dimensional field theory, forming a condensate below a critical temperature. By adding magnetic charge to the black hole, we immerse the superconductor into an external magnetic field. We show that a family of condensates can form and we examine their structure. For finite magnetic field, they are localized in one dimension with a profile that is exactly solvable, since it maps to the quantum harmonic oscillator. As the magnetic field increases, the condensate shrinks in size, which is reminiscent of the Meissner effect.

Evolution of holographic entanglement entropy after thermal and electromagnetic quenches

We study the evolution and scaling of the entanglement entropy after two types of quenches for a 2+1 field theory, using a conjectured holographic technique for its computation. We study a thermal quench, dual to the addition of a shell of uncharged matter to four-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS4) spacetime, and study the subsequent formation of a Schwarzschild black hole. We also study an electromagnetic quench, dual to the addition of a shell of charged sources to AdS4, following the subsequent formation of an extremal dyonic black hole. In these backgrounds, we consider the entanglement entropy of two types of geometries, the infinite strip and the round disc, and find distinct behavior for each. Some of our findings naturally supply results analogous to observations made in the literature for lower dimensions, but we also uncover several new phenomena, such as (in some cases) a discontinuity in the time derivative of the entanglement entropy as it nears saturation, and for the electromagnetic quench, a logarithmic growth in the entanglement entropy with time for both the disc and strip, before settling to saturation. We briefly discuss the possible origin of the new phenomena in terms of the features of the conjectured dual field theory.

Experimental signature of programmable quantum annealing

Quantum annealing is a general strategy for solving difficult optimization problems with the aid of quantum adiabatic evolution. Both analytical and numerical evidence suggests that under idealized, closed system conditions, quantum annealing can outperform classical thermalization-based algorithms such as simulated annealing. Current engineered quantum annealing devices have a decoherence timescale which is orders of magnitude shorter than the adiabatic evolution time. Do they effectively perform classical thermalization when coupled to a decohering thermal environment? Here we present an experimental signature which is consistent with quantum annealing, and at the same time inconsistent with classical thermalization. Our experiment uses groups of eight superconducting flux qubits with programmable spin-spin couplings, embedded on a commercially available chip with >100 functional qubits. This suggests that programmable quantum devices, scalable with current superconducting technology, implement quantum annealing with a surprising robustness against noise and imperfections.

Topology-changing first order phase transition and the dynamics of flavor

In studying the dynamics of large N{sub c}, SU(N{sub c}) gauge theory at finite temperature with fundamental quark flavors in the quenched approximation, we observe a first order phase transition. A quark condensate forms at finite quark mass, and the value of the condensate varies smoothly with the quark mass for generic regions in parameter space. At a particular value of the quark mass, there is a finite discontinuity in the condensates vacuum expectation value, corresponding to a first order phase transition. We study the gauge theory via its string dual formulation using the AdS/CFT conjecture, the string dual being the near-horizon geometry of N{sub c} D3-branes at finite temperature, AdS{sub 5}-SchwarzschildxS{sup 5}, probed by a D7-brane. The D7-brane has topology R{sup 4}xS{sup 3}xS{sup 1} and allowed solutions correspond to either the S{sup 3} or the S{sup 1} shrinking away in the interior of the geometry. The phase transition represents a jump between branches of solutions having these two distinct D-brane topologies. The transition also appears in the meson spectrum.

Finite temperature large N gauge theory with quarks in an external magnetic field

Using a ten dimensional dual string background, we study aspects of the physics of finite temperature large N four dimensional SU(N) gauge theory, focusing on the dynamics of fundamental quarks in the presence of a background magnetic field. At vanishing temperature and magnetic field, the theory has N = 2 supersymmetry, and the quarks are in hypermultiplet representations. In a previous study, similar techniques were used to show that the quark dynamics exhibit spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. In the present work we begin by establishing the non-trivial phase structure that results from finite temperature. We observe, for example, that above the critical value of the field that generates a chiral condensate spontaneously, the meson melting transition disappears, leaving only a discrete spectrum of mesons at any temperature. We also compute several thermodynamic properties of the plasma.

Quarks in an External Electric Field in Finite Temperature Large N Gauge Theory

We use a ten dimensional dual string background to study aspects of the physics of large N four dimensional SU(N) gauge theory, where its fundamental quarks are charged under a background electric field. The theory is N = 2 supersymmetric for vanishing temperature and electric field. We work in a limit where the quarks do not back-react. At zero temperature, we observe that the electric field induces a phase transition associated with the dissociation of the mesons into their constituent quarks. This is an analogue of an insulator-metal transition, since the system goes from being an insulator with zero current (in the applied field) to a conductor with free charge carriers (the quarks). At finite temperature this phenomenon persists, and the dissociation transition becomes subsumed into the more familiar meson melting transition. Here, the dissociation phenomenon reduces the critical melting temperature.

Holographic studies of entanglement entropy in superconductors

A bstractWe present the results of our studies of the entanglement entropy of a super- conducting system described holographically as a fully back-reacted gravity system, with a stable ground state. We use the holographic prescription for the entanglement entropy. We uncover the behavior of the entropy across the superconducting phase transition, showing the reorganization of the degrees of freedom of the system. We exhibit the behaviour of the entanglement entropy from the superconducting transition all the way down to the ground state at T = 0. In some cases, we also observe a novel transition in the entanglement entropy at intermediate temperatures, resulting from the detection of an additional length scale.

Vortex and droplet engineering in a holographic superconductor

We give a detailed account of the construction of nontrivial localized solutions in a

Error-corrected quantum annealing with hundreds of qubits

2+1

Holographic entanglement entropy and renormalization group flow

dimensional model of superconductors using a