I describe a condensed matter system in terms of interacting quantum fields. In this electronic system, gauge interactions of non electromagnetic origin are generated effectively with a topological term in the effective action and play a leading role in describing the physics. Using the renormalization group and large-N expansion technique, I analyze the low energy sector of a U (1) × U (1) model in three dimensional space-time with a potential of sixth order in the scalar fields coupled to mixed Chern-Simons gauge fields. From the quantum effective potential, I derive various renormalization group functions and the fixed points associated with a quantum phase transition.
I describe a condensed matter system in terms of interacting quantum fields. In this electronic system, gauge interactions of non electromagnetic origin are generated effectively with a topological term in the effective action and play a leading role in describing the physics. Using the renormalization group and large-N expansion technique, I analyze the low energy sector of a U (1) × U (1) model in three dimensional space-time with a potential of sixth order in the scalar fields coupled to mixed Chern-Simons gauge fields. From the quantum effective potential, I derive various renormalization group functions and the fixed points associated with a quantum phase transition.
Gauge theories and topological phases play a fundamental role in different areas of physics. The first ones are at the basis of the Standard Model in the field of particle physics, describing the electroweak and strong interactions through a non-Abelian gauge theory. In condensed matter and statistical physics, gauge theories arise as low-energy effective descriptions of strongly correlated phenomena, such as quantum spin liquids and quantum Hall effect. In this realm there is a strong connection with topological phases and order, as emergent gauge fermions and bosons often describe collective excitations of new exotic states of matter of spin models. The discretization on a lattice is a possible way of dealing with the strongly coupled nature of these theories, due to the fact that this formulation at finite volume provides natural regularizing cut-offs, i.e. the lattice size and spacing. This allows for the investigation of different non-perturbative properties both numerically and analytically. Despite the success of these methods, there are various aspects which remain intractable due to the sign or complex action problems, like the out of equilibrium real time evolution or the analysis of quantum chromodynamics with finite chemical potential. In this respect, quantum simulators of many-body systems to simulate high energy physics arise as promising alternatives to face these problems in the near future. They are quantum systems that can be controlled and used to simulate more complicated systems, whose properties could not be analysed with classical computational, experimental or theoretical tools. In the last decades, there has been a huge development in the fields of quantum optics and atomic physics, allowing for the realization highly precise and controllable platforms by means of trapped ions, superconducting circuits, Rydberg atoms and ultracold atoms in optical lattices. This work of Thesis is part of these fields and has different purposes, all of them connected with the study of gauge theories and topological phases. Firstly, we want to develop a reformulation of lattice gauge theories in terms of gauge invariant fields, in a way to deal solely with physical variables directly in the action. Among several possible advantages, a crucial point is that this can be particularly helpful for the construction of consistent approximation schemes, such as mean-field theories, in order to understand and capture some of the physical features of the theory and make the mean-field approximation consistent with the Elitzur theorem, stating that a local gauge symmetry can not be spontaneously broken. As a second point, we face the problem of simulating higher dimensional gauge theories with ultracold atoms. One of the challenges in more than one dimension is indeed the realization of plaquette interaction terms in the Hamiltonian of lattice gauge theories: these can be engineered through four correlated hoppings in perturbation theory, or by means of constrained hoppings in the dual formulation. In this respect, our main target is to set up an ultracold atomic platform generating the plaquette term in two dimensions using only two correlated hoppings, and protecting gauge invariance through angular momentum conservation. The last point we address in the Thesis is related to the analysis of particles moving in static background gauge potentials, i.e. when the considered gauge field has no dynamical term in the action of the system. Indeed, the dynamics of quantum particles in the presence of static gauge fields gives rise to intriguing physical phenomena. In particular, using ultracold atom setups, the realization of artificial gauge potentials can be used to investigate the physics of topological semimetals, such as Weyl or Dirac type. In the last ten years, a lot of attention has been paid to their characterization, due to the appearence of clear theoretical predictions and very well-controlled experimental techniques. We investigate here the relation between topological phase transitions and van Hove singularities, i.e. the discontinuities in the energy derivative of the density of states, in three-dimensional gapless systems. In such materials, topological phase transitions can be defined by changes of the topological invariants of the Fermi sheets, happening at specific singular points. Moreover, Fermi surface singularities result in the presence of the so-called van Hove points. We then present a general argument to relate topological phase transitions and van Hove singularities, and show observable consequences that are related to the transport properties of the system. We exemplify our argument in Weyl systems by analyzing the three-dimensional Hofstadter model for various commensurate fluxes, which offers the opportunity to consider different kinds of Weyl metals and to understand the features of their density of states.
The critical behavior of a two-dimensional scalar Euclidean field theory with a potential term that allows for three minima is analyzed using an approximate position-space renormalization-group transformation on the equivalent quantum spin Hamiltonian. The global phase diagram shows a tricritical point separating a critical line from a line of first-order transitions. Other critical properties are examined, and good agreement is found with results on classical spin models belonging to the same universality class.
Providing a broad review of many techniques and their application to condensed matter systems, this book begins with a review of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, before moving onto real and imaginary time path integrals and the link between Euclidean quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. A detailed study of the Ising, gauge-Ising and XY models is included. The renormalization group is developed and applied to critical phenomena, Fermi liquid theory and the renormalization of field theories. Next, the book explores bosonization and its applications to one-dimensional fermionic systems and the correlation functions of homogeneous and random-bond Ising models. It concludes with Bohm–Pines and Chern–Simons theories applied to the quantum Hall effect. Introducing the reader to a variety of techniques, it opens up vast areas of condensed matter theory for both graduate students and researchers in theoretical, statistical and condensed matter physics.
Providing a broad review of many techniques and their application to condensed matter systems, this book begins with a review of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, before moving onto real and imaginary time path integrals and the link between Euclidean quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. A detailed study of the Ising, gauge-Ising and XY models is included. The renormalization group is developed and applied to critical phenomena, Fermi liquid theory and the renormalization of field theories. Next, the book explores bosonization and its applications to one-dimensional fermionic systems and the correlation functions of homogeneous and random-bond Ising models. It concludes with Bohm-Pines and Chern-Simons theories applied to the quantum Hall effect. Introducing the reader to a variety of techniques, it opens up vast areas of condensed matter theory for both graduate students and researchers in theoretical, statistical and condensed matter physics.
We have studied the critical properties of three-dimensional U(1)-symmetric lattice gauge theories. The models apply to various physical systems such as insulating phases of strongly correlated electron systems as well as superconducting and superfluid states of liquid metallic hydrogen under extreme pressures. This thesis contains an introductory part and a collection of research papers of which seven are published works and one is submitted for publication.\n\nPaper I: Critical properties of the 2+1-dimensional compact abelian Higgs model with gauge charge q=2 are studied. We introduce a novel method of computing the third moment M3 of the action which allows us to extract correlation length and specific heat critical exponents ν and α without invoking hyperscaling. Finite-size scaling analysis of M3 yields the ratio (1+α)/ν and 1/ν separately. We find that α and ν vary along the critical line of the theory, which however exhibits a remarkable resilience of Z2 criticality. We conclude that the model is a fixed-line theory, which we propose to characterize the zero temperature quantum phase transition from a Mott-Hubbard insulator to a charge fractionalized insulator in two spatial dimensions.\n\nPaper II: Large scale Monte Carlo simulations are employed to study phase transitions in the three-dimensional compact abelian Higgs model in adjoint representations of the matter field, labeled by an integer q, for q=2,3,4,5. We also study various limiting cases of the model, such as the Zq lattice gauge theory, dual to the 3DZq spin model, and the 3D xy spin model which is dual to the Zq lattice gauge theory in the limit q → ∞. In addition, for benchmark purposes, we study the 2D square lattice 8-vertex model, which is exactly solvable and features non-universal critical exponents. The critical exponents α and ν are calculated from finite size scaling of the third moment of the action, and the method is tested thoroughly on models with known values for these exponents. We have found that for q=3, the three-dimensional compact abelian Higgs model exhibits a second order phase transition line which joins a first order phase transition line at a tricritical point. The results for q=2 in Paper I are reported with a higher lever of detail.\n\nPaper III: This paper is based on a talk by F. S. Nogueira in the Aachen HEP 2003 conference where a review of the results for the compact abelian Higgs model from Paper I and Paper II was presented, as well as the results for the q=1 case studied by F. S. Nogueira, H. Kleinert and A. Sudbø.\n\nPaper IV: We study the effects of a Chern-Simons (CS) term in the phase structure of two different abelian gauge theories in three dimensions. By duality transformations we show how the compact U(1) gauge theory with a CS term for certain values of the CS coupling can be written as a gas of vortex loops interacting through steric repulsion. This theory is known to exhibit a phase transition governed by proliferation of vortex loops. We also employ Monte Carlo simulations to study the non-compact U(1) abelian Higgs model with a CS term. Finite size scaling of the third moment of the action yields critical exponents α and ν that vary continuously with the strength of the CS term, and a comparison with available analytical results is made.\n\nPaper V: The critical properties of N-component Ginzburg-Landau theory are studied in d=2+1 dimensions. The model is dualized to a theory of N vortex fields interacting through a Coulomb and a screened potential. The model with N=2 shows two anomalies in the specific heat. From Monte Carlo simulations we calculate the critical exponents α and ν and the mass of the gauge field. We conclude that one anomaly corresponds to an inverted 3D xy fixed point, while the other corresponds to a 3D xy fixed point. There are N fixed points, namely one corresponding to an inverted 3D xy fixed point, and N-1corresponding to neutral 3D xy fixed points. Applications are briefly discussed.\n\nPaper VI: The phase diagram and critical properties of the N-component London superconductor are studied both analytically and through large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations in d=2+1 dimensions. The model with different bare phase stiffnesses for each flavor is a model of superconductivity which should arise out of metallic phases of light atoms under extreme pressure. A projected mixture of electronic and protonic condensates in liquid metallic hydrogen under extreme pressure is the simplest example, corresponding to N=2 with individually conserved matter fields. We compute critical exponents α and ν for N=2 and N=3. The results from Paper V are presented at a higher level of detail. For the arbitrary N case, there are N fixed points,namely one charged inverted 3D xy fixed point, and N-1 neutral 3D xy fixed points. We explicitly identify one charged vortex mode and N-1 neutral vortex modes. The model for N=2 and equal bare phase stiffnesses corresponds to a field theoretical description of an easy-plane quantum antiferromagnet. In this case, the critical exponents are computed and found to be non 3D xy values. Furthermore, we study the model in an external magnetic field, and find a novel feature, namely N-1 superfluid phases arising out of N charged condensates. In particular, for N=2 we point out the possibility of two novel types of field-induced phase transitions in ordered quantum fluids: i) A phase transition from a superconductor to a superfluid or vice versa, driven by tuning an external magnetic field. This identifies the superconducting phase of liquid metallic hydrogen as a novel quantum fluid. ii) A phase transition corresponding to a quantum fluid analogue of sublattice melting, where a composite field-induced Abrikosov vortex lattice is decomposed and disorders the phases of the constituent condensate with lowest bare phase stiffness. Both transitions belong to the 3D xy universality class.\n\nPaper VII: We consider the vortex superconductor with two individually conserved condensates in a finite magnetic field. The ground state is a lattice of cocentered vortices in both order parameters. We find two novel phase transitions when temperature is increased at fixed magnetic field. i) A "vortex sublattice melting" transition where vortices in the field with lowest phase stiffness ("light vortices") loose cocentricity with the vortices with large phase stiffness ("heavy vortices"), entering a liquid state (the structure factor of the light vortex sublattice vanishes continuously.) This transition is in the 3D xy universality class. ii) A first order melting transition of the lattice of heavy vortices in a liquid of light vortices.\n\nPaper VIII: We report on large-scale Monte Carlo simulations of a novel type of a vortex matter phase transition which should take place in a three dimensional two-component superconductor. We identify the regime where first, at a certain temperature a field-induced lattice of co-centered vortices of both order parameters melts, causing the system to loose superconductivity. In this state the two-gap system retains a broken composite symmetry and we observe that at a higher temperature it undergoes an extra phase transition where the disordered composite one-flux-quantum vortex lines are "ionized" into a "plasma" of constituent fractional flux vortex lines in individual order parameters. This is the hallmark of the superconductor-to-superfluid-to-normal fluid phase transitions projected to occur in e.g. liquid metallic hydrogen.
The low-energy spin excitations in the flux phase of the (2+1)-dimensional large-nSU(n)Heisenberg antiferromagnet are relativistic fermions coupled to a U(1) gauge field. These excitations are studied in the physical n=2 case with the use of a n1 expansion. A Chern-Simons term is included to remove gauge configurations forbidden in the n=2 theory.