Aspects of the Holographic Study of Flavor Dynamics

This thesis is dedicated to the holographic study of flavor dynamics. The technique employed is a D7-brane probing of various D3-brane backgrounds. The first topic covered studies the influence of an external magnetic field on a flavored large N Yang-Mills theory. The theory exhibits spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. The meson spectrum exhibits Zeeman splitting and characteristic GMOR relation. The second topic examines thermal properties of the dual gauge theory. The third topic studies the phase structure of the finite temperature dual gauge theory in the presence of magnetic field. A phase diagram of the theory is obtained and the meson spectrum is explored. The fourth topic studies the addition of an external electric field. The observed effect is dissociation of the bound quarks, favoring the meson melting, the dissociation of mesons corresponds to an insulator/conductor phase transition. The fifth topic studies the addition of an R-charge chemical potential via brane probing of the spinning D3-brane geometry. The corresponding phase diagram is obtained. The chemical potential favors the dissociation of mesons. The last topic explores universal properties of gauge theories dual to the Dp/Dq system. A universal discrete self-similar behavior associated to the insulator/conductor phase transition is observed and the corresponding scaling exponents are computed.