Holographic nuclear physics with massive quarks

We discuss nuclear physics in the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model, in the limit of large number Nc of colors and large 't Hooft coupling, with the addition of a finite mass for the quarks. Individual baryons are described by classical solitons whose size is much smaller than the typical distance in nuclear bound states; thus, we can use the linear approximation to compute the interaction potential and provide a natural description for lightly bound states. We find the classical geometry of nuclear bound states for baryon numbers up to B=8. The effect of the finite pion mass - induced by the quark mass via the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation - is to decrease the binding energy of the nuclei with respect to the massless case. We discuss the finite density case with a particular choice of a cubic lattice, for which we find the critical chemical potential, at which the hadronic phase transition occurs.