English

Criticality in the 2+1-dimensional compact Higgs model and fractionalized insulators

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2009-11-07 v2 High Energy Physics - Lattice

Abstract

We use a novel method of computing the third moment M_3 of the action of the 2+1-dimensional compact Higgs model in the adjoint representation with q=2 to extract correlation length and specific heat exponents nu and alpha, without invoking hyperscaling. Finite-size scaling analysis of M_3 yields the ratio (1+alpha)/nu and 1/nu separately. We find that alpha and nu vary along the critical line of the theory, which however exhibits a remarkable resilience of Z_2 criticality. We propose this novel universality class to be that of the quantum phase transition from a Mott-Hubbard insulator to a charge-fractionalized insulator in two spatial dimensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0207501,
  title  = {Criticality in the 2+1-dimensional compact Higgs model and fractionalized insulators},
  author = {A. Sudbø and E. Smørgrav and J. Smiseth and F. S. Nogueira and J. Hove},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0207501},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett