We study charged dilaton black branes in AdS ₄. Our system involves a dilaton ϕ coupled to a Maxwell field F _μν with dilaton-dependent gauge coupling, \( \frac{1}{{{g^2}}} = {f^2}\left( \phi \right) \). First, we find the solutions for extremal and near extremal branes through a combination of analytical and numerical techniques. The near horizon geometries in the simplest cases, where f(ϕ) = e ^αϕ, are Lifshitz-like, with a dynamical exponent z determined by α. The black hole thermodynamics varies in an interesting way with α, but in all cases the entropy is vanishing and the specific heat is positive for the near extremal solutions. We then compute conductivity in these backgrounds. We find that somewhat surprisingly, the AC conductivity vanishes like ω ² at T = 0 independent of α. We also explore the charged black brane physics of several other classes of gauge-coupling functions f(ϕ). In addition to possible applications in AdS/CMT, the extremal black branes are of interest from the point of view of the attractor mechanism. The near horizon geometries for these branes are universal, independent of the asymptotic values of the moduli, and describe generic classes of endpoints for attractor flows which are different from AdS ₂ × R ².

We study black branes carrying both electric and magnetic charges in Einstein-Maxwell theory coupled to a dilaton-axion in asymptotically anti de Sitter space. After reviewing and extending earlier results for the case of electrically charged branes, we characterise the thermodynamics of magnetically charged branes. We then focus on dyonic branes in theories which enjoy an SL(2,R) electric-magnetic duality. Using SL(2,R), we are able to generate solutions with arbitrary charges starting with the electrically charged solution, and also calculate transport coefficients. These solutions all exhibit a Lifshitz-like near-horizon geometry. The system behaves as expected for a charged fluid in a magnetic field, with non-vanishing Hall conductance and vanishing DC longitudinal conductivity at low temperatures. Its response is characterised by a cyclotron resonance at a frequency proportional to the magnetic field, for small magnetic fields. Interestingly, the DC Hall conductance is related to the attractor value of the axion. We also study the attractor flows of the dilaton-axion, both in cases with and without an additional modular-invariant scalar potential. The flows exhibit intricate behaviour related to the duality symmetry. Finally, we briefly discuss attractor flows in more general dilaton-axion theories which do not enjoy SL(2,R) symmetry.

Chern-Simons gauge theories coupled to massless fundamental scalars or fermions define interesting non-supersymmetric 3d CFTs that possess approximate higher-spin symmetries at large N . In this paper, we compute the scaling dimensions of the higher-spin operators in these models, to leading order in the 1/N expansion and exactly in the ’t Hooft coupling. We obtain these results in two independent ways: by using conformal symmetry and the classical equations of motion to fix the structure of the current non-conservation, and by a direct Feynman diagram calculation. The full dependence on the ’t Hooft coupling can be restored by using results that follow from the weakly broken higher-spin symmetry. This analysis also allows us to obtain some explicit results for the non-conserved, parity-breaking structures that appear in planar three-point functions of the higher-spin operators. At large spin, we find that the anomalous dimensions grow logarithmically with the spin, in agreement with general expectations. This logarithmic behavior disappears in the strong coupling limit, where the anomalous dimensions turn into those of the critical O(N ) or Gross-Neveu models, in agreement with the conjectured 3d bosonization duality.

We study the $O(N{)}^3$ symmetric quantum field theory of a bosonic tensor ${\varphi }^{abc}$ with sextic interactions. Its large $N$ limit is dominated by a positive-definite operator, whose index structure has the topology of a prism. We present a large $N$ solution of the model using Schwinger-Dyson equations to sum the leading diagrams, finding that for $2.81<d<3$ and for $d<1.68$ the spectrum of bilinear operators has no complex scaling dimensions. We also develop perturbation theory in $3-\epsilon$ dimensions including eight $O(N{)}^3$ invariant operators necessary for the renormalizability. For sufficiently large $N$, we find a “prismatic” fixed point of the renormalization group, where all eight coupling constants are real. The large $N$ limit of the resulting $\epsilon$ expansions of various operator dimensions agrees with the Schwinger-Dyson equations. Furthermore, the $\epsilon$ expansion allows us to calculate the $1/N$ corrections to operator dimensions. The prismatic fixed point in $3-\epsilon$ dimensions survives down to $N\approx 53.65$, where it merges with another fixed point and becomes complex. We also discuss the $d=1$ model where our approach gives a slightly negative scaling dimension for $\varphi$, while the spectrum of bilinear operators is free of complex dimensions.