Hard-gapped holographic superconductors

In this work we discuss the zero temperature limit of a p-wave holographic superconductor. The bulk description consists of a non-Abelian SU(2) gauge fields minimally coupled to gravity. We numerically construct the zero temperature solution which is the gravity dual of the superconducting ground state of the p-wave holographic superconductors. The solution is a smooth soliton with zero horizon size and shows an emergent conformal symmetry in the IR. We found the expected superconducting behavior. Using the near horizon analysis we show that the system has a hard gap for the relevant gauge field fluctuations. At zero temperature the real part of the conductivity is zero for an excitation frequency less than the gap frequency. This is in contrast with what has been observed in similar scalar-gravity-gauge systems (holographic superconductors). We also discuss the low but finite temperature behavior of our solution. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.