arXiv subjects

Wei-Jia Li

Publications and source records attributed to Wei-Jia Li.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Black hole interiors of homogeneous holographic solids under shear strain

We investigate the interior of AdS black holes under finite shear strain in a class of holographic axion models, which are widely used to describe strongly-coupled systems with broken translations. We demonstrate that the shear anisotropy necessarily eliminates the inner Cauchy horizon, such that the deformed black hole approaches a spacelike singularity. The anisotropic effect induced by the axion fields triggers a collapse of the Einstein-Rosen bridge at the would-be Cauchy horizon, accompanied by a rapid change in the anisotropy of the spatial geometry. In addition, for a power-law axion potential, sufficiently large shear deformations give rise to a domain wall solution that includes a Lifshitz like scaling geometry near the boundary as well as a near horizon Kasner epoch with the Kasner exponents determined by the powers of the potential. Finally, we find that the interior dynamics of black holes generally enter an era described by an anisotropic Kasner universe at later interior time. Depending on the form of the potential, they either tend to stable Kasner universes, or exhibit an endless alternation of different Kasner epochs toward the singularity.

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arXiv2025

Collective dynamics in holographic fractonic solids

Fractonic phases of matter, a class of states in which collective excitations with constrained mobility exist, were originally discovered in the study of quantum error-correcting codes in solvable lattice spin models such as Haah's code and the X-cube model. Recently, they have also drawn the attention of the high-energy physics community due to the UV/IR mixing that arises when coarse-graining these lattice models. In this work, we consider a (3+1)-dimensional holographic model of fractonic solids and investigate the low-energy collective dynamics systematically. By computing the quasinormal modes of black holes, we obtain all the hydrodynamic excitations on the boundary, including two acoustic phonons, a longitudinal diffusive mode, and a subdiffusive collective mode with the dispersion $ω\sim-ik^4$. In addition, it is found that the latter remains gapless when translational symmetry is explicitly broken. These results suggest that the subdiffusive mode is inherently protected by the crystal-dipole symmetry in solids and is qualitatively unaffected by broken spacetime symmetries.

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arXiv2025

Universality of pseudo-Goldstone damping near critical points

Real-time dynamics of strongly correlated systems, in particular its critical dynamics near phase transitions, have been always on the cutting edge of studies in diverse fields of physics, e.g., high energy physics, condensed matter, holography, etc. In this work, we investigate the critical damping of collective modes associated with spontaneous breaking of approximate symmetries, which are called pseudo-Goldstone modes, in strongly correlated systems. Using the Schwinger-Keldysh field theory, we find a universal pseudo-Goldstone damping via the critical O($N$) model that has never been found before by other approaches. Different from the conventional damping found in holography and hydrodynamics, the new one is controlled by critical fluctuations, hence is invisible in mean-field systems or strongly correlated systems with classical gravity duals. Since the critical damping depends solely on the universalities of the critical point, irrespective of the microscopic details, our conclusion should be applicable to a wide class of interacting systems.

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arXiv2025

Classical elasticity meets quantum complexity: A connection from the holographic lens

In this work, we explore the effects of shear deformations in a wide class of holographic amorphous solids. It is found that both the shear stress and the complexity of formation grow with the increase of the shear strain. Notably, in the regime of very large shear, they exhibit coordinated behavior and adhere to a universal scaling relation, uncovering a surprising connection between two seemingly unrelated aspects of amorphous systems. Furthermore, our findings also provide a counterexample to the previous understanding that the complexity scales linearly with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for large static black holes.

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arXiv2025

Hydrodynamic modes in holographic multiple-axion model

In this paper we investigate the shear viscoelasticity and the hydrodynamic modes in a holographic solid model with several sets of axions that all break the translations spontaneously on boundary. Comparing with the single-axion model, the shear modulus is enhanced at high temperatures and the shear viscosity is always suppressed in the presence of additional axions. However, the different sets of axions exhibit competitive relationship in determining the shear modulus at low temperatures. Furthermore, by calculating the black hole quasi-normal modes, it is found that adding more axions only increases the amount of diffusive modes. The number of the sound modes always remains unchanged.

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arXiv2025

Shear viscoelasticity in anisotropic holographic axion model

In this work, we investigate the shear elasticity and the shear viscosity in a simple holographic axion model with broken translational symmetry and rotational symmetry in space via the perturbation computation. We find that, in the case of spontaneous symmetry breaking, the broken translations and anisotropy both enhance the shear elasticity of the system. While in all cases, the broken symmetries introduce a double suppression on the shear viscosity, which is in contrast to the result from the study of the p-wave holographic superfluid where the shear viscosity is enhanced when the rotational symmetry is broken spontaneously.

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arXiv2024

Mechanical stability of homogeneous holographic solids under finite shear strain

We study the linear stability of holographic homogeneous solids (HHS) at finite temperature and in presence of a background shear strain by means of a large scale quasi-normal mode analysis which extends beyond the hydrodynamic limit. We find that mechanical instability can arise either as a result of a complex speed of sound -- gradient instability -- or of a negative diffusion constant. Surprisingly, the simplest HHS models are linearly stable for arbitrarily large values of the background strain. For more complex HHS, the onset of the diffusive instability always precedes that of the gradient instability, which becomes the dominant destabilizing process only above a critical value of the background shear strain. Finally, we observe that the critical strains for the two instabilities approach each other at low temperatures. We conclude by presenting a phase diagram for HHS as a function of temperature and background shear strain which shows interesting similarities with the physics of superfluids in presence of background superfluid velocity.

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arXiv2022

Transverse Goldstone mode in holographic fluids with broken translations

In this paper we investigate the low energy shear modes in fluid systems with spontaneously broken translations by a specific holographic model. In absence of momentum relaxation, we find that there exist two decoupled gapless modes in the transverse channel, one of which is purely diffusive and the other corresponds to vortex like excitations. The diffusive mode is associated with the conservation of momentum and the vortex mode can be viewed as the Goldstone mode of the spontaneous symmetry breaking. Switching on an external source which breaks the translations explicitly but weakly, the would-be gapless modes both get relaxed and acquire a tiny mass gap. Finally, in the strong momentum relaxation regime, we find a (pseudo-)diffusive-to-sound crossover that is set by a momentum gap.

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arXiv2021

Holographic phonons by gauge-axion coupling

In this paper, we show that a simple generalization of the holographic axion model can realize spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry by considering a special gauge-axion higher derivative term. The finite real part and imaginary part of the stress tensor imply that the dual boundary system is a viscoelastic solid. By calculating quasi-normal modes and making a comparison with predictions from the elasticity theory, we verify the existence of phonons and pseudo-phonons, where the latter is realized by introducing a weak explicit breaking of translational symmetry, in the transverse channel. Finally, we discuss how the phonon dynamics affects the charge transport.

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arXiv2021

On the universality of AdS$_2$ diffusion bounds and the breakdown of linearized hydrodynamics

The chase of universal bounds on diffusivities in strongly coupled systems and holographic models has a long track record. The identification of a universal velocity scale, independent of the presence of well-defined quasiparticle excitations, is one of the major challenges of this program. A recent analysis, valid for emergent IR fixed points exhibiting local quantum criticality, and dual to IR AdS$_2$ geometries, suggests to identify such a velocity using the time and length scales at which hydrodynamics breaks down -- the equilibration velocity. The latter relates to the radius of convergence of the hydrodynamic expansion and it is extracted from a collision between a hydrodynamic diffusive mode and a non-hydrodynamic mode associated to the IR AdS$_2$ region. In this short note, we confirm this picture for holographic systems displaying the spontaneous breaking of translational invariance. Moreover, we find that, at zero temperature, the lower bound set by quantum chaos and the upper one defined by causality and hydrodynamics exactly coincide, determining uniquely the diffusion constant. Finally, we comment on the meaning and universality of this newly proposed prescription.

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arXiv2021

Holographic Axion Model: a simple gravitational tool for quantum matter

This is a complete and exhaustive review on the so-called holographic axion model -- a bottom-up holographic system characterized by the presence of a set of shift symmetric scalar bulk fields whose profiles are taken to be linear in the spatial coordinates. This simple model implements the breaking of translational invariance of the dual field theory by retaining the homogeneity of the background geometry and therefore allowing for controllable and fast computations. The usages of this model are very vast and they are a proof of the spectacular versatility of the framework. In this review, we touch upon all the up-to-date aspects of this model from its connection with massive gravity and effective field theories, to its role in modeling momentum dissipation and elastic properties ending with all the phenomenological features and its hydrodynamic description. In summary, this is a complete guide to one of the most used model in Applied Holography and a must-read for any researcher entering this field.

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arXiv2020

Universal Bounds on Transport in Holographic Systems with Broken Translations

We study the presence of universal bounds on transport in homogeneous holographic models with broken translations. We verify numerically that, in holographic systems with momentum dissipation, the viscosity to entropy bound might be violated but the shear diffusion constant remains bounded by below. This confirms the idea that $η/s$ loses its privileged role in non-relativistic systems and that, in order to find more universal bounds, one should rather look at diffusion constants. We strengthen this idea by showing that, in presence of spontaneously broken translations, the Goldstone diffusion constant satisfies a universal lower bound in terms of the Planckian relaxation time and the butterfly velocity. Additionally, all the diffusive processes in the model satisfy an upper bound, imposed by causality, which is given in terms of the thermalization time -- the imaginary part of the first non-hydrodynamic mode in the spectrum -- and the speed of longitudinal sound. Finally, we discuss the existence of a bound on the speed of sound in holographic conformal solids and we show that the conformal value acts as a lower (and not upper) bound on the speed of longitudinal phonons. Nevertheless, we show that the stiffness $\partial p/\partial ε$ is still bounded by above by its conformal value. This suggests that the bounds conjectured in the past have to be considered on the stiffness of the system, related to its equation of state, and not on the propagation speed of sound.

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arXiv2019

AC charge transport in holographic Horndeski gravity

In this paper, we investigate the AC charge transport in the holographic Horndeski gravity and identify a metal-semiconductor like transition that is driven by the Horndeski coupling. Moreover, we fit our numeric data by the Drude formula in slow relaxation cases.

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arXiv2019

A simple holographic model for spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry

It has been shown that holographic massive gravities can effectively realize the states with spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry in a homogenous manner. In this work, we consider a toy model of such category by adding a special gauge-axion coupling to the bulk action. Firstly, we identify the existence of spontaneous breaking of translations by the UV analysis. In the absence of explicit breaking, the black hole solution is simply the same as the Reissner-Nodstrom(RN) black holes, regardless of the non-trivial profile of the bulk axions. The associated Goldstone modes exist only when the charge density is non-zero. Then, we investigate the optical conductivity both analytically as well as numercially. Our numerical result perfectly agrees with that for a clean system, while the incoherent part gets modified due to the symmetry breaking. The transverse Goldstone modes are dispersionless, which reflects the fact that the solution is dual to a liquid state. Finally, the effect of momentum relaxation to the transverse modes is also considered. In this case, the would-be massless modes are pinned at certain frequency, which is another key difference from unbroken phases.

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arXiv2018

Weyl corrections to diffusion and chaos in holography

Using holographic methods in the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion (EMDA) theory, it was conjectured that the thermal diffusion in a strongly coupled metal without quasi-particles saturates an universal lower bound that is associated with the chaotic property of the system at infrared (IR) fixed points~\cite{blake:1705}. In this paper, we investigate the thermal transport and quantum chaos in the EMDA theory with a small Weyl coupling term. It is found that the Weyl coupling correct the thermal diffusion constant $D_Q$ and butterfly velocity $v_B$ in different ways, hence resulting a modified relation between the two at IR fixed points. Unlike that in the EMDA case, our results show that the ratio $D_Q/ (v_B^2τ_L)$ always contains a {\it non-universal} Weyl correction which depends on the matter fields as long as the $U(1)$ current is relevant in the IR.

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arXiv2017

Thermal diffusivity and butterfly velocity in anisotropic Q-Lattice models

By using a holographic method we study a relation between the thermal diffusivity ($D_T$) and two quantum chaotic properties, Lyapunov time ($τ_L$) and butterfly velocity ($v_B$) in strongly correlated systems. It has been shown that $D_T/(v_B^2 τ_L)$ is universal in some holographic models as well as condensed matter systems including the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models. We investigate to what extent this relation is universal in the Q-lattice models with infrared (IR) scaling geometry, focusing on the effect of spatial anisotropy. Indeed it was shown that $\mathcal{E}_i := D_{T,i}/(v_{B,i}^2 τ_L)$ ($i=x,y$) is determined only by some scaling exponents of the IR metric in the low temperature limit regardless of the matter fields and ultraviolet data. Inspired by this observation, in this work, we find the concrete expressions for $\mathcal{E}_i$ in terms of the critical dynamical exponents $z_i$ in each direction. By analyzing the IR scaling geometry we identify the allowed scaling parameter regimes, which enable us to compute the allowed range of $\mathcal{E}_i$. We find the lower bound of $\mathcal{E}_i$ is always $1/2$, which is not affected by anisotropy, contrary to the $η/s$ case. However, there may be an upper bound determined by anisotropy.

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arXiv2017

Diffusivities bounds and chaos in holographic Horndeski theories

We study the thermoelectric DC conductivities of Horndeski holographic models with momentum dissipation. We compute the butterfly velocity $v_B$ and we discuss the existence of universal bounds on charge and energy diffusivities in the incoherent limit related to quantum chaos. We find that the Horndeski coupling represents a subleading contribution to the thermoelectric conductivities in the incoherent limit and therefore it does not affect any of the proposed bounds.

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arXiv2017

Higher derivative corrections to incoherent metallic transport in holography

Transport in strongly-disordered, metallic systems is governed by diffusive processes. Based on quantum mechanics, it has been conjectured that these diffusivities obey a lower bound $D/v^2\gtrsim \hbar/k_B T$, the saturation of which provides a mechanism for the T-linear resistivity of bad metals. This bound features a characteristic velocity $v$, which was later argued to be the butterfly velocity $v_B$, based on holographic models of transport. This establishes a link between incoherent metallic transport, quantum chaos and Planckian timescales. Here we study higher derivative corrections to an effective holographic action of homogeneous disorder. The higher derivative terms involve only the charge and translation symmetry breaking sector. We show that they have a strong impact on the bound on charge diffusion $D_c/v_B^2\gtrsim \hbar/k_B T$, by potentially making the coefficient of its right-hand side arbitrarily small. On the other hand, the bound on energy diffusion is not affected.

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