Competing orders in M-theory: superfluids, stripes and metamagnetism

Abstract

We analyse the infinite class of d = 3 CFTs dual to skew-whiffed AdS ₄ × SE ₇ solutions of D = 11 supergravity at finite temperature and charge density and in the presence of a magnetic field. We construct black hole solutions corresponding to the unbroken phase, and at zero temperature some of these become dyonic domain walls of an Einstein-Maxwell-pseudo-scalar theory interpolating between AdS ₄ in the UV and new families of dyonic $Ad{S_2}\times {{\mathbb{R}}^2}$ solutions in the IR. The black holes exhibit both diamagnetic and paramagnetic behaviour. We analyse superfluid and striped instabilities and show that for large enough values of the magnetic field the superfluid instability disappears while the striped instability remains. For larger values of the magnetic field there is also a first-order metamagnetic phase transition and at zero temperature these black hole solutions exhibit hyperscaling violation in the IR with dynamical exponent z = 3/2 and θ = −2.