Holographic s-wave superconductors with Horndeski correction

Abstract

Abstract Via both numerical and analytical methods, we build the holographic s-wave insulator/superconductor model in the five-dimensional AdS soliton with the Horndeski correction in the probe limit and study the effects of Horndeski parameter k on the superconductor model. For the fixed mass squared of the scalar field ($$m^2$$m2), the critical chemical potential $$\mu _c$$μc increases with the larger Horndeski parameter k, which means that the increasing Horndeski correction hinders the superconductor phase transition. Meanwhile, above the critical chemical potential, the obvious pole arises in the low frequency of the imaginal part of conductivity, which signs the appearance of superconducting state. What is more, the energy of quasiparticle excitation decreases with the larger Horndeski correction. Furthermore, the critical exponent of the condensate (charge density) is $$\frac{1}{2}$$12 (1), which is independent of the Horndeski correction. In addition, the analytical results agree well with the numerical results. Subsequently, the conductor/superconductor model with Horndeski correction is analytically realized in the four- and five-dimensional AdS black holes. It is observed that the increasing Horndeski correction decreases the critical temperature and thus hinders the superconductor phase transition, which agrees with the numerical result in the previous works.