Holographic baryonic matter without flavor branes

In holographic models flavor is usually realized by introducing additional branes in a dual supergravity background. With this realization one is forced to work in a probe approximation or solve supergravity equations with sources, which typically requires introducing additional phenomenological simplifications. In addition, since there are no fields carrying baryon charge on the branes, baryonic matter is dual to solitonic configurations on the flavor branes, which makes challenging to describe a state with non-zero baryon density. Here we will show how these issues can be avoided by considering a holographic model where baryon symmetry is already realized in the dual supergravity sector. We construct confining solutions with non-zero baryon density that do not involve solitonic configurations despite the absence of dual fields carrying baryon charge. The model is a three-dimensional field theory cousin of Klebanov-Strassler and shares with it some interesting features like a duality cascade.