English

Extraordinary boundary correlations at deconfined quantum critical points

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2026-01-14 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Recent years have seen a growing appreciation for the effects of quantum critical fluctuations on gapless boundary degrees of freedom. Here we consider the boundary dynamics of the non-compact CPN1\mathbb{CP}^{N-1} (NCCPN1^{N-1}) model in two spatial dimensions, with NN complex boson species coupled to a fluctuating U(1)\mathrm{U}(1) gauge field. These models describe quantum phase transitions beyond the Landau paradigm, such as the deconfined quantum critical point between superconducting (SC) and quantum spin Hall (QSH) phases. We show that, in a large-NN limit and with the bulk tuned to criticality, boundaries of the NCCPN1^{N-1} model display logarithmically decaying, or ``extraordinary-log,'' correlations. In particular, when monopole operators exhibit quasi-long-ranged order at the boundary, we find that the extraordinary-log exponent of the NCCPN1^{N-1} model in the large-NN limit is q=N/4q=N/4, signifying a new family of boundary universality classes parameterized by NN. In the context of the QSH -- SC transition, the quantum critical point inherits helical edge modes from the QSH phase, and this extraordinary-log behavior manifests in their Cooper pair correlations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.07923,
  title  = {Extraordinary boundary correlations at deconfined quantum critical points},
  author = {Hao-Ran Cui and Hart Goldman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.07923},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

55 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:01:29.550Z