Holographic Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Transitions

Understand

We find the first example of a quantum Berenzinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition in two spatial dimensions via holography.

• This transition occurs in the D3/D5 system at nonzero density and magnetic field.
• At any nonzero temperature, the BKT scaling is destroyed and the transition becomes second order with mean-field exponents.
• We go on to conjecture about the generality of quantum BKT transitions in two spatial dimensions.