On spontaneous breaking of conformal symmetry by probe flavour D-branes

We explore the possibilities of breaking conformal symmetry spontaneously by introducing flavour branes into conformal holographic backgrounds in the probe limit. A prototype model of such a mechanism is based on placing D7 - anti-D7 configuration in the Klebanov-Witten conifold based model. In this paper we generalize this model. We conjecture on the required topology of the backgrounds and the corresponding probe brane embeddings. We identify several models that obey these requirements and admit spontaneous breaking of conformal invariance. These include type IIB conifold based examples, dual to defect field theories based on the conifold, and type IIA constructions based on the ABJM model. We identify the dilaton, the corresponding Goldstone boson, discuss its effective action and address the "a-term". We briefly discuss the relevance of these models to the pseudo dilaton.