Holographic Lifshitz flows and the null energy condition

Abstract

We study asymptotically Lifshitz spacetimes and the constraints on flows between Lifshitz fixed points imposed by the null energy condition. In contrast with the relativistic holographic c-theorem, where the effective AdS radius, L, is monotonically decreasing in the IR, for Lifshitz backgrounds we find that both L and z may flow in either direction. We demonstrate this with several numerical examples in a phenomenological model with a massive gauge field coupled to a real scalar.