Superconductivity from gauge/gravity duality with flavor

We consider thermal strongly-coupled N = 2 SYM theory with fundamental matter at finite isospin chemical potential. Using gauge/gravity duality, i.e. a probe of two flavor D7-branes embedded in the Ads black hole background, we find a critical temperature at which the system undergoes a second order phase transition. The critical exponent of this transition is one half and coincides with the result from mean field theory. in the thermodynamically favored phase, a flavor current acquires a vev and breaks an Abelian symmetry spontaneously. This new phase shows signatures known from superconductivity, such as an infinite dc conductivity and a gap in the frequency-dependent conductivity. The gravity setup allows for an explicit identification of the degrees of freedom in the dual field theory, as well as for a dual string picture of the condensation process. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.