Novel metals and insulators from holography

Abstract

Using simple holographic models in $D=4$ spacetime dimensions we construct black hole solutions dual to $d=3$ CFTs at finite charge density with a Q-lattice deformation. At zero temperature we find new ground state solutions with broken translation invariance, either in one or both spatial directions, which exhibit insulating or metallic behaviour depending on the parameters of the holographic theory. For low temperatures and small frequencies, the real part of the optical conductivity has a power-law behaviour, with the exponent determined by the ground state. We also obtain an expression for the the DC conductivity at finite temperature in terms of horizon data of the black hole solutions.