  We use AdS/CFT duality to study the thermodynamics of a strongly coupled N=2
supersymmetric large Nc SU(Nc) gauge theory with Nf =2 fundamental
hypermultiplets. At finite temperature T and isospin chemical potential mu, a
potential on the Higgs branch is generated, corresponding to a potential on the
moduli space of instantons in the AdS description. For mu =0, there is a known
first order phase transition around a critical temperature Tc. We find that the
Higgs VEV is a suitable order parameter for this transition; for T>Tc, the
theory is driven to a non-trivial point on the Higgs branch. For non-zero mu
and T=0, the Higgs potential is unbounded from below, leading to an instability
of the field theory due to Bose-Einstein condensation.
