Emergent QED$_3$ at the bosonic Laughlin state to superfluid transition
Abstract
Quantum phase transitions between topologically ordered and symmetry-broken phases lie beyond Landau theory. A prime example is the conjectured continuous transition from the bosonic Laughlin state to a superfluid, proposed to be governed by a QED--Chern--Simons (CS) critical point whose stability remains uncertain. We study half-filled bosons in the lowest Landau level subject to a lattice potential. Infinite-cylinder DMRG reveals a single continuous Laughlin--to--superfluid transition. Adiabatic flux insertion collapses the many-body gap and exposes massless Dirac quasiparticles, while momentum-resolved correlation lengths show that three lattice-related density modes share the same critical exponent, evidencing an emergent symmetry. The joint appearance of Dirac dispersion and symmetry enlargement provides microscopic support for a stable QED--CS fixed point. Our numerical strategy also offers a blueprint for exploring Landau-forbidden transitions in fractional Chern insulators and composite Fermi liquids realised in moire and cold-atom systems.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.07611,
title = {Emergent QED$_3$ at the bosonic Laughlin state to superfluid transition},
author = {Taige Wang and Xue-Yang Song and Michael P. Zaletel and T. Senthil},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.07611},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
13 pages, 8 figures