Noisy branes

Abstract

We study the effects of disorder on strongly coupled compressible matter in 2+1 dimensions. Our system consists of a D3/D5 intersection at finite temperature and in the presence of a disordered chemical potential. We first study the impact of disorder on the charge density and the quark condensate. Next, we focus on the DC conductivity and derive analytic expressions for the corrections induced by weak disorder. It is found that disorder enhances the DC conductivity at low charge density, while for large charge density the conductivity is reduced. We present numerical simulations both for weak and strong disorder. Finally, we show how disorder gives rise to a sublinear behavior for the conductivity as a function of the charge density, a behavior qualitatively similar to predictions and observations for electric transport in graphene.