Theory HEP Seminar

Fermi Seas around Black Holes

Tom Hartman

Harvard University

The horizon of a rotating or charged black hole provides a chemical potential for quantum fields in the black hole background. For massive fermions, this naturally leads to a filled Fermi sea around the black hole that extends well outside the ergosphere. In some cases, this Fermi sea is unstable toward the formation of Cooper pairs and the onset of superconductivity. Although the Fermi sea is in the bulk spacetime, it provides a new perspective on holographic approaches to condensed matter systems, including holographic superconductors and non-Fermi liquids, and the dual CFT is useful to understand the peculiar phase diagram of the bulk Fermi sea.