Landau Levels, Anisotropy and Holography

Abstract: We analyze properties of field theories dual to extremal black branes in (4+1) dimensions with anisotropic near-horizon geometries. Such gravity solutions were recently shown to fall into nine classes which align with the Bianchi classification of real three-dimensional Lie algebras. As a warmup we compute constraints on critical exponents from energy conditions in the bulk and scalar two point functions for a general type I metric, which has translation invariance but broken rotations. We also comment on the divergent nature of tidal forces in general Bianchi-type metrics. Then we come to our main focus: extremal branes whose near-horizon isometries are those of the Heisenberg algebra (type II). We find hyperscaling-violating solutions with type II isometries in (4+1)-dimensions. We show that scale invariant (4+1)-dimensional type II metrics are related by Kaluza-Klein reduction to more symmetric $AdS_2\times R^2$ and (3+1)-dimensional hyperscaling-violating spacetimes. These solutions generically have $\theta \leq 0$. We discuss how one can obtain flows from UV CFTs to Bianchi-type spacetimes in the IR via the Higgs mechanism, as well as potential inhomogeneous instabilities of type II. Finally, we compute two-point functions of massive and massless scalar operators in the dual field theory and find that they exhibit the behavior of a theory with Landau levels.