Physics

Gravitation

Spontaneous symmetry breaking

Graviton

Composite material

Holography

Materials science

Symmetry breaking

Phonon

Condensed matter physics

Massive gravity

Theoretical physics

Shear modulus

Quantum mechanics

Classical mechanics

Translational symmetry

Shear (geology)

Thermodynamics

Physical Review Letters

We present a class of holographic massive gravity models that realize a spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry-they exhibit transverse phonon modes whose speed relates to the elastic shear modulus according to elasticity theory. Massive gravity theories thus emerge as versatile and convenient theories to model generic types of translational symmetry breaking: explicit, spontaneous, and a mixture of both. The nature of the breaking is encoded in the radial dependence of the graviton mass. As an application of the model, we compute the temperature dependence of the shear modulus and find that it features a glasslike melting transition.

Holographic Phonons