Three Roads to Probe-Brane Superconductivity

Understand

We study a defect system of two parallel D5 probe branes in a large-N_c D3 background.

• Using the non-abelian DBI action, we study three different fields that can give rise to a superconducting phase transition: A vector (p-wave), a scalar corresponding to a non-trivial "separation"' of the branes in the (3+1) field theory directions and a scalar corresponding to a separation in the "internal" S^5 (both s-wave).
• Comparing these phases first in the \alpha'^2 expansion, we find that the internal scalar has the largest critical temperature and is always thermodynamically preferred.
• Further, there is an interesting attractor behavior.