Commensurate lock-in in holographic non-homogeneous lattices

Understand

We consider the spontaneous formation of striped structures in a holographic model which possesses explicit translational symmetry breaking, dual to an ionic lattice with spatially modulated chemical potential.

• We focus on the perturbative study of the marginal modes which drive the transition to a phase exhibiting spontaneous stripes.
• We study the wave-vectors of the instabilities with largest critical temperature in a wide range of backgrounds characterized by the period and the amplitude of the chemical potential modulation.
• We report the first holographic observation of the commensurate lock-in between the spontaneous stripes and the underlying ionic lattice, which takes place when the amplitude of the lattice is large enough.