Exploring colourful holographic superconductors

Abstract

We explore a class of holographic superconductors built using non-abelian condensates on probe branes in conformal and non-conformal backgrounds. These are shown to exhibit behaviour of the specific heat which resembles that of heavy fermion compounds in the superconducting phase. Instead of showing BCS-like exponential behaviour, the specific heat is polynomial in the temperature. It exhibits a jump at the critical temperature, in agreement with real-world superconductors. We also analyse the behaviour of the energy gap and the AC and DC conductivities, and find that the systems can be either semi-conducting or metallic just above the critical temperature.