No Arabic abstract
Recently, non-perturbative approximate solutions were presented that go beyond the well-known mean-field resummation. In this work, these non-perturbative approximations are used to calculate finite temperature equilibrium properties for scalar $phi^4$ theory in two dimensions such as the pressure, entropy density and speed of sound. Unlike traditional approaches, it is found that results are well-behaved for arbitrary temperature/coupling strength, are independent of the choice of the renormalization scale $barmu^2$, and are apparently converging as the resummation level is increased. Results also suggest the presence of a possible analytic cross-over from the high-temperature to the low-temperature regime based on the change in the thermal entropy density.
I consider quantum electrodynamics with many electrons in 2+1 space-time dimensions at finite temperature. The relevant dimensionless interaction parameter for this theory is the fine structure constant divided by the temperature. The theory is solvable at any value of the coupling, in particular for very weak (high temperature) and infinitely strong coupling (corresponding to the zero temperature limit). Concentrating on the photon, each of its physical degrees of freedom at infinite coupling only contributes half of the free-theory value to the entropy. These fractional degrees of freedom are reminiscent of what has been observed in other strongly coupled systems (such as N=4 SYM), and bear similarity to the fractional Quantum Hall effect, potentially suggesting connections between these phenomena. The results found for QED3 are fully consistent with the expectations from particle-vortex duality.
Pure CFTs have vanishing $beta$-function at any value of the coupling. One example of a pure CFT is the O(N) Wess-Zumino model in 2+1 dimensions in the large N limit. This model can be analytically solved at finite temperature for any value of the coupling, and we find that its entropy density at strong coupling is exactly equal to 31/35 of the non-interacting Stefan-Boltzmann result. We show that a large class of theories with equal numbers of N-component fermions and bosons, supersymmetric or not, for a large class of interactions, exhibit the same universal ratio. For unequal numbers of fermions and bosons we find that the strong-weak thermodynamic ratio is bounded to lie in between 4/5 and 1.
In 2+1 dimensions, QED becomes exactly solvable for all values of the fermion charge $e$ in the limit of many fermions $N_fgg 1$. We present results for the free energy density at finite temperature $T$ to next-to-leading-order in large $N_f$. In the naive large $N_f$ limit, we uncover an apparently UV-divergent contribution to the vacuum energy at order ${cal O}(e^6 N_f^3)$, which we argue to become a finite contribution of order ${cal O}(N_f^4 e^6)$ when resumming formally higher-order $1/N_f$ contributions. We find the finite-temperature free energy to be well-behaved for all values of the dimensionless coupling $e^2N_f/T$, and to be bounded by the free energy of $N_f$ free fermions and non-interacting QED3, respectively. We invite follow-up studies from finite-temperature lattice gauge theory at large but fixed $N_f$ to test our results in the regime $e^2N_f/Tgg 1$.
The next to the leading order Casimir effect for a real scalar field, within $phi^4$ theory, confined between two parallel plates is calculated in one spatial dimension. Here we use the Greens function with the Dirichlet boundary condition on both walls. In this paper we introduce a systematic perturbation expansion in which the counterterms automatically turn out to be consistent with the boundary conditions. This will inevitably lead to nontrivial position dependence for physical quantities, as a manifestation of the breaking of the translational invariance. This is in contrast to the usual usage of the counterterms, in problems with nontrivial boundary conditions, which are either completely derived from the free cases or at most supplemented with the addition of counterterms only at the boundaries. We obtain emph{finite} results for the massive and massless cases, in sharp contrast to some of the other reported results. Secondly, and probably less importantly, we use a supplementary renormalization procedure in addition to the usual regularization and renormalization programs, which makes the usage of any analytic continuation techniques unnecessary.
We present the first holographic simulations of non-equilibrium steady state formation in strongly coupled $mathcal{N}=4$ SYM theory in 3+1 dimensions. We initially join together two thermal baths at different temperatures and chemical potentials and compare the subsequent evolution of the combined system to analytic solutions of the corresponding Riemann problem and to numeric solutions of ideal and viscous hydrodynamics. The time evolution of the energy density that we obtain holographically is consistent with the combination of a shock and a rarefaction wave: A shock wave moves towards the cold bath, and a smooth broadening wave towards the hot bath. Between the two waves emerges a steady state with constant temperature and flow velocity, both of which are accurately described by a shock+rarefaction wave solution of the Riemann problem. In the steady state region, a smooth crossover develops between two regions of different charge density. This is reminiscent of a contact discontinuity in the Riemann problem. We also obtain results for the entanglement entropy of regions crossed by shock and rarefaction waves and find both of them to closely follow the evolution of the energy density.