Contents
Introduction 1
Notations and conventions 7
I Preliminary material 8
1 Symmetry breaking in quantum field theory 11
1.1 Spontaneous breaking and Goldstone theorem . . . 11
1.1.1 Relativistic Goldstone theorem . . . 13
1.1.2 Coleman theorem . . . 16
1.2 Explicit breaking and Ward identities . . . 19
1.3 Goldstone theorem in non-relativistic field theories . . . 23
1.3.1 Relativistic-like theories with chemical potential . . . 28
1.3.2 Lifshitz invariant field theories . . . 31
2 Holography from a boundary-oriented perspective 37 2.1 Holographic renormalization . . . 40
2.1.1 Two-point functions from the renormalized action . . . 46
2.1.2 Holographic renormalization in presence of logarithms . . . 49
II Symmetry breaking in holographic field theories 52 3 Symmetry breaking in relativistic holographic setups 55 3.1 Spontaneous and explicit breaking in a holographic-dual CFT . . . 55
Contents
3.2 The 1+1 dimensional case: Coleman fate in holography . . . 67
3.2.1 Maxwell gauge field in AdS3 . . . 68
3.2.2 Holographic renormalization with a charged scalar. . . 71
3.2.3 Symmetry breaking and Goldstone boson in AdS3/CFT2 . . . 78
4 Holographic type B non-relativistic GB 83 4.1 Renormalized action for a holographic type B GB model . . . 84
4.2 Holographic WI’s for symmetry breaking in presence of charge density . . . 88
5 Symmetry breaking in Lifshitz holography 93 5.1 Two-point functions for Lifshitz scalars . . . 94
5.1.1 The hard wall solution for Lifshitz Klein-Gordon scalar. . . 97
5.1.2 Two-point function for a general scalar . . . 99
5.2 Lifshitz holography for a massless vector . . . 102
5.2.1 Two-point function for a Lifshitz vector . . . 106
5.3 Lifshitz holography for symmetry breaking . . . 108
5.3.1 Holographic renormalization and Ward identities. . . 111
Main results 115
Bibliography 119