No Arabic abstract
Monopole operators are topological disorder operators in 2+1 dimensional compact gauge field theories appearing notably in quantum magnets with fractionalized excitations. For example, their proliferation in a spin-1/2 kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet triggers a quantum phase transition from a Dirac spin liquid phase to an antiferromagnet. The quantum critical point (QCP) for this transition is described by a conformal field theory: Compact quantum electrodynamics (QED3) with a fermionic self-interaction, a type of QED3-Gross-Neveu model. We obtain the scaling dimensions of monopole operators at the QCP using a state-operator correspondence and a large-N expansion, where 2N is the number of fermion flavors. We characterize the hierarchy of monopole operators at this SU(2) x SU(N) symmetric QCP.
We study the quantum phase transition from a Dirac spin liquid to an antiferromagnet driven by condensing monopoles with spin quantum numbers. We describe the transition in field theory by tuning a fermion interaction to condense a spin-Hall mass, which in turn allows the appropriate monopole operators to proliferate and confine the fermions. We compute various critical exponents at the quantum critical point (QCP), including the scaling dimensions of monopole operators by using the state-operator correspondence of conformal field theory. We find that the degeneracy of monopoles in QED3 is lifted and yields a non-trivial monopole hierarchy at the QCP. In particular, the lowest monopole dimension is found to be smaller than that of QED3 using a large $N_f$ expansion where $2N_f$ is the number of fermion flavors. For the minimal magnetic charge, this dimension is $0.39N_f$ at leading order. We also study the QCP between Dirac and chiral spin liquids, which allows us to test a conjectured duality to a bosonic CP$^1$ theory. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for quantum magnets on the Kagome lattice.
The QED$_3$-Gross-Neveu model is a (2+1)-dimensional U(1) gauge theory involving Dirac fermions and a critical real scalar field. This theory has recently been argued to represent a dual description of the deconfined quantum critical point between Neel and valence bond solid orders in frustrated quantum magnets. We study the critical behavior of the QED$_3$-Gross-Neveu model by means of an epsilon expansion around the upper critical space-time dimension of $D_c^+=4$ up to the three-loop order. Estimates for critical exponents in 2+1 dimensions are obtained by evaluating the different Pade approximants of their series expansion in epsilon. We find that these estimates, within the spread of the Pade approximants, satisfy a nontrivial scaling relation which follows from the emergent SO(5) symmetry implied by the duality conjecture. We also construct explicit evidence for the equivalence between the QED$_3$-Gross-Neveu model and a corresponding critical four-fermion gauge theory that was previously studied within the 1/N expansion in space-time dimensions 2<D<4.
An important yet largely unsolved problem in the statistical mechanics of disordered quantum systems is to understand how quenched disorder affects quantum phase transitions in systems of itinerant fermions. In the clean limit, continuous quantum phase transitions of the symmetry-breaking type in Dirac materials such as graphene and the surfaces of topological insulators are described by relativistic (2+1)-dimensional quantum field theories of the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa (GNY) type. We study the universal critical properties of the chiral Ising, XY, and Heisenberg GNY models perturbed by quenched random-mass disorder, both uncorrelated or with long-range power-law correlations. Using the replica method combined with a controlled triple epsilon expansion below four dimensions, we find a variety of new finite-randomness critical and multicritical points with nonzero Yukawa coupling between low-energy Dirac fields and bosonic order parameter fluctuations, and compute their universal critical exponents. Analyzing bifurcations of the renormalization-group flow, we find instances of the fixed-point annihilation scenario---continuously tuned by the power-law exponent of long-range disorder correlations and associated with an exponentially large crossover length---as well as the transcritical bifurcation and the supercritical Hopf bifurcation. The latter is accompanied by the birth of a stable limit cycle on the critical hypersurface, which represents the first instance of fermionic quantum criticality with emergent discrete scale invariance.
The coupling between fermionic matter and gauge fields plays a fundamental role in our understanding of nature, while at the same time posing a challenging problem for theoretical modeling. In this situation, controlled information can be gained by combining different complementary approaches. Here, we study a confinement transition in a system of $N_f$ flavors of interacting Dirac fermions charged under a U(1) gauge field in 2+1 dimensions. Using Quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate a lattice model that exhibits a continuous transition at zero temperature between a gapless deconfined phase, described by three-dimensional quantum electrodynamics, and a gapped confined phase, in which the system develops valence-bond-solid order. We argue that the quantum critical point is in the universality class of the QED$_3$-Gross-Neveu-XY model. We study this field theory within a $1/N_f$ expansion in fixed dimension as well as a renormalization group analysis in $4-epsilon$ space-time dimensions. The consistency between numerical and analytical results is revealed from large to intermediate flavor number.
Dirac and Weyl fermions appear as quasi-particle excitations in many different condensed-matter systems. They display various quantum transitions which represent unconventional universality classes related to the variants of the Gross-Neveu model. In this work we study the bosonized version of the standard Gross-Neveu model -- the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa theory -- at three-loop order, and compute critical exponents in $4-epsilon$ dimensions for general number of fermion flavors. Our results fully encompass the previously known two-loop calculations, and agree with the known three-loop results in the purely bosonic limit of the theory. We also find the exponents to satisfy the emergent super-scaling relations in the limit of a single-component fermion, order by order up to three loops. Finally, we apply the computed series for the exponents and their Pade approximants to several phase transitions of current interest: metal-insulator transitions of spin-1/2 and spinless fermions on the honeycomb lattice, emergent supersymmetric surface field theory in topological phases, as well as the disorder-induced quantum transition in Weyl semimetals. Comparison with the results of other analytical and numerical methods is discussed.