Holographic Roberge-Weiss Transitions

Understand

We investigate N=4 SYM coupled to fundamental flavours at nonzero imaginary quark chemical potential in the strong coupling and large N limit, using gauge/gravity duality applied to the D3-D7 system, treating flavours in the probe approximation.

• The interplay between Z(N) symmetry and the imaginary chemical potential yields a series of first-order Roberge-Weiss transitions.
• An additional thermal transition separates phases where quarks are bound/unbound into mesons.
• This results in a set of Roberge-Weiss endpoints: we establish that these are triple points, determine the Roberge-Weiss temperature, give the curvature of the phase boundaries and confirm that the theory is analytic in mu^2 when mu^2~0.