arXiv subjects

Carlos Hoyos

Publications and source records attributed to Carlos Hoyos.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A symmetry-based resolution of pseudo-gauge ambiguities in local equilibrium

The total angular momentum current can be decomposed into orbital and spin contributions in different ways, known as pseudo-gauges. This freedom leads to ambiguities in the definition of local-equilibrium density operators, which in turn affect estimates of spin polarization in heavy-ion collisions. In this work, the pseudo-gauge ambiguity, together with other ambiguities associated with improvements of conserved currents, is reformulated in terms of spurious symmetries corresponding to conserved currents with vanishing total charge. A prescription for the unambiguous definition of a local-equilibrium density operator is introduced using the currents associated with genuine symmetries. The resulting density operator is invariant under transformations that add improvement terms to local currents, including the energy-momentum tensor.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2026

Supergravity flows, wormholes and their pseudo-Hermitian holographic duals

We find solutions to consistent truncations of supergravity where some real scalars are analytically extended to imaginary values, ensuring the metric remains real-valued. Among the solutions there are Lorentzian traversable wormholes connecting two asymptotically Anti-de Sitter spacetimes and flows that have a real metric also when uplifted to ten or eleven dimensions. We argue that the holographic duals are pseudo-Hermitian and $PT$-symmetric theories. Wormhole solutions also admit an interpretation as the low-energy theory of two stacks of branes and antibranes after tachyon condensation. The wormhole is then dual to an entangled state of two copies of the theory that lives on a stack of branes. We present some evidence by computing the mutual information between the theories at each boundary and by identifying the Goldstone bosons associated to the breaking of the two copies of Poincaré symmetry to their diagonal subgroup.

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arXiv2026

Connecting boundary entropy and effective central charge at holographic interfaces

The entanglement entropy of intervals in $1+1$ interface CFTs is modified in two ways compared to a CFT without interface: there is a finite boundary entropy contribution, and, for an interval with an endpoint at the interface, the coefficient of the logarithmically divergent contribution -- which is usually proportional to the central charge of the CFT -- is modified to an effective central charge. We show that the latter modification can be understood as a limit of the former using holographic duals of interface CFTs. Furthermore, we show that a finite contribution also appears in intervals that do not cross the interface and it is needed to ensure strong subbaditivity of the entanglement entropy.

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arXiv2026

Microscopic Description of Critical Bubbles

First-order phase transitions occur through the nucleation of critical bubbles of the stable phase within the metastable phase. Using holography, we present a fully microscopic description of these bubbles in a strongly coupled, four-dimensional gauge theory at finite temperature. In the gravitational dual, these bubbles correspond to static, inhomogeneous and unstable black-brane solutions with a localized deformation on the horizon. We construct these solutions across the entire metastable branch and compute the surface tension and the nucleation rate. We then compare these microscopic results with those obtained from a two-derivative effective action for the order parameter in two different scenarios. When the effective action is derived from the microscopic theory via holography, we find remarkable agreement. However, when the effective action is constrained only by the equation of state and dimensional analysis, significant discrepancies emerge. These discrepancies can be resolved if an additional constraint related to the surface tension is imposed.

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arXiv2025

Subtleties of non-Abelian D-brane actions and their effect on holographic heavy-light meson spectra

We revisit the holographic description of heavy light mesons in the D3-D7 system at zero temperature, analyzing the dynamics of the coupled probe D7 branes through the non-Abelian Dirac-Born-Infeld action. Distinct quark masses are realized by separating the flavor branes, producing holographic flavor hierarchies. We refine the calculation made in previous works: we impose Hermiticity on the induced metric and fix the expansion of the determinant for matrix valued fields. Implementing these improvements yields modified fluctuation equations and quantitatively different meson spectra: the scalar modes become heavier while the vector modes become lighter, removing the degeneracy reported in the literature. At finite 't Hooft coupling, we also observe a qualitatively different dependence of the vector modes on the quark masses. The resulting prescription provides a consistent, broadly applicable framework for incorporating non-Abelian flavor dynamics into holographic models and can be readily extended to situations away from the vacuum.

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arXiv2025

Spontaneous breaking of baryon symmetry in strongly coupled three-dimensional theories

We show that baryon number symmetry is spontaneously broken in a class of three-dimensional, ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetric theories with a discrete mass spectrum. These models serve as lower-dimensional, less-supersymmetric analogs of the Klebanov-Strassler solution, sharing properties such as the presence of a cascade. The spontaneous symmetry breaking is evidenced by the appearance of a Goldstone mode, which corresponds to a vector fluctuation in the gravity dual.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Thermal response of the Nieh-Yan term

We reinterpret the Nieh-Yan (NY) anomaly using holography, finding that the U(1) axial symmetry remains unbroken and the axial current coupling to an external gauge field is conserved. Instead, the anomaly arises from a breakdown of Hodge duality relations between fermion bilinears due to symmetry constraints on one-form currents. We show that the axial response associated with the NY term is distinct from the chiral vortical effect and exhibits a characteristic $T^2$ dependence. Torsion-induced axial transport decouples spin and axial charge dynamics, thereby clarifying the physical significance of the NY anomaly and motivating further field-theoretic and holographic studies.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Fracton Gauge Theories in Curved Spacetimes

Fractonic matter with dipole symmetry can be coupled to a two-index symmetric tensor gauge field. In this work, we show that this symmetric tensor field, along with other related generalized Maxwell theories, can be consistently coupled to curved backgrounds in a covariant and gauge-invariant way by reformulating dipole symmetry using conventional vector gauge fields. We identify a family of curved geometries where global dipole symmetry is preserved and derive energy-momentum conservation laws as Ward identities associated with background diffeomorphisms. Our results pave the way for future extensions, including generalizations to higher-order multipole theories.

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arXiv2024

Light holographic dilatons near critical points

We investigate the relation between the emergence of a dilaton in gapped (confining) field theories, and the presence of either complex fixed points or instabilities in the strongly coupled dynamics in two classes of bottom-up holographic models. We demonstrate that in one of the two classes there is a critical line of first-order phase transitions (at zero temperature) that terminates at a critical point. We calculate the mass spectrum of fluctuations of the associated regular gravity backgrounds, which we interpret as bound states in the dual field theories. In proximity to the second-order phase transition, we find a parametrically light scalar state, and its composition leads us to identify it as a dilaton.

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arXiv2024

Weak rates in strongly coupled cold quark matter

The rates of flavor-changing weak processes are crucial in determining the conditions of beta equilibrium in neutron stars and mergers, influencing the damping of oscillations, the stability of rotating pulsars, and the emission of gravitational waves. We derive a formula for these rates at nonzero temperature, to leading order in the Fermi coupling and exact in the QCD coupling. Utilizing a simple phenomenological holographic model dual to QCD, we study massless unpaired quark matter at high densities. We numerically compute the rate for small deviations from beta equilibrium and derive an analytic approximation for small temperatures. Our findings reveal that, compared to the perturbative result, the rate is suppressed by logarithmic factors of the temperature.

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arXiv2024

Estimate for the bulk viscosity of strongly coupled quark matter using perturbative QCD and holography

Modern hydrodynamic simulations of core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers require knowledge not only of the equilibrium properties of strongly interacting matter, but also of the system's response to perturbations, encoded in various transport coefficients. Using perturbative and holographic tools, we derive here an improved weak-coupling and a new strong-coupling result for the most important transport coefficient of unpaired quark matter, its bulk viscosity. These results are combined in a simple analytic pocket formula for the quantity that is rooted in perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics at high densities but takes into account nonperturbative holographic input at neutron-star densities, where the system is strongly coupled. This expression can be used in the modeling of unpaired quark matter at astrophysically relevant temperatures and densities.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

On the stability of fracton gravity

We study the stability of fracton gravity, a variant of linearized gravity where the gauge symmetry is restricted to longitudinal diffeomorphisms. These transformations can be connected to a spacetime generalization of dipole symmetry, hence the tag fracton. We find that fracton gravity features an instability in the spin-1 sector corresponding to solutions with growing amplitude. This dynamical instability can be removed by tuning the couplings of the theory. Nonetheless, the Hamiltonian for the spin-1 modes remains always unbounded from below when evaluated on the classical solutions. We find no other sources of instability in the spin-2 or spin-0 sectors. We analyze in detail the canonical formulation and the constraints arguing that neither auxiliary fields nor gauge-fixing conditions can be employed to remove the problematic vector modes or stabilize them.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Spinodal slowing down and scaling in a holographic model

The dynamics of first-order phase transitions in strongly coupled systems are relevant in a variety of systems, from heavy ion collisions to the early universe. Holographic theories can be used to model these systems, with fluctuations usually suppressed. In this case the system can come close to a spinodal point where theory and experiments indicate that the the behaviour should be similar to a critical point of a second-order phase transition. We study this question using a simple holographic model and confirm that there is critical slowing down and scaling behaviour close to the spinodal point, with precise quantitative estimates. In addition, we determine the start of the scaling regime for the breakdown of quasistatic evolution when the temperature of a thermal bath is slowly decreased across the transition. We also extend the analysis to the dynamics of second-order phase transitions and strong crossovers.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Fracton gravity from spacetime dipole symmetry

Dipole charge conservation forces isolated charges to be immobile fractons. These couple naturally to spatial two-index symmetric tensor gauge fields that resemble a spatial metric. We propose a spacetime Lorentz covariant version of dipole symmetry and study the theory of the associated gauge fields. In the presence of a suitable background field, these contain a massive anti-symmetric and a massless symmetric two-index tensors. The latter transforms only under longitudinal diffeomorphisms, making the massless sector similar to linearized gravity, but with additional modes of lower spin. We show that the theory can be consistently coupled to a curved background metric and study its possible interaction terms with itself and with matter. In addition, we construct a map between solutions of linearized gravity in Kerr-Schild form and solutions of fracton gravity coupled to matter.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Dipole symmetry breaking and fractonic Nambu-Goldstone mode

We introduce a family of quantum field theories for fields carrying monopole and dipole charges. In contrast to previous realizations, fields have quadratic two-derivative kinetic terms. The dipole symmetry algebra is realized in a discretized internal space and connected to the physical space through a background gauge field. We study spontaneous symmetry breaking of dipole symmetry in 1+1 dimensions in a large-$N$ limit. The trivial classical vacuum is lifted by quantum corrections into a vacuum which breaks dipole symmetry while preserving monopole charge. By means of a Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation, heat-kernel and large-$N$ techniques, we compute the effective action for the low-energy modes. We encounter a fractonic immobile Nambu-Goldstone mode whose dispersion characteristics avoid Coleman-Hohenberg-Mermin-Wagner theorem independently of the large-$N$ limit.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Baryonic matter at strong coupling: confining superfluids and deconfined ferromagnets

We study the phase diagram of a strongly coupled confining theory in $2+1$ dimensions, as a function of temperature and baryon chemical potential. The theory has a fully fledged supergravity holographic dual, that we use to predict a line of first order phase transitions separating a confining phase and a deconfined phase. Both phases exhibit a non-zero baryon density thus providing a first example of baryonic matter in a confining string dual that does not require the introduction of flavor branes. We argue that the confining phase is a baryon superfluid, while the deconfined phase has non-zero baryon magnetization.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Revisiting the chiral effective action in holographic models

We obtain the pion decay constant and coefficients of fourth derivative terms in the chiral Lagrangian for massless quarks in the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model. We extract these quantities from the two-pion scattering amplitude, which we compute directly in the holographic dual through tree-level Witten diagrams. Identification of the low energy coefficients in the chiral action is subtle as their values will be shifted when the tower of massive vector bosons are integrated out. Indeed, by a direct comparison with the existing standard procedure of constructing the chiral action with radial modes in the gravity dual, we explicitly show that there are finite 't Hooft coupling corrections that have been missed. This suggests that past derivations of effective actions from holographic models may have to be revisited and future derivations more carefully considered.

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arXiv2022

Higgs phases at non-zero density from holography

We show how Higgs phases at non-zero density can be described using a simple analytic method for gauge theories possessing a holographic dual. We introduce co-dimension one branes in a bottom-up gravity dual that are sources of form flux, such that the effective curvature radius is changed when the brane is crossed. This mimics the expected flow produced by color branes nucleating in a top-down model.

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