Generalizing Deconfined Criticality to 3D $N$-Flavor $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ Quantum Chromodynamics on the Fuzzy Sphere
Abstract
The infra-red behaviour of gauge theories coupled to matter remains an open problem in quantum field theory. For a given gauge group, such theories are expected to flow to an interacting conformal fixed point over a range of fermion or scalar flavours, known as the `conformal window.' Their nature is important for understanding critical phases and phase transitions beyond the Landau paradigm like the deconfined quantum critical point (DQCP), yet remains challenging for conventional non-perturbative approaches. In this work, we study a family of fuzzy-sphere models corresponding to non-linear sigma models with global symmetry extended to the strongly-coupled region. These theories are expected have an infra-red fixed point described by quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in three space-time dimensions with flavours of fermions. They can be viewed as a generalisation of the DQCP, corresponding to . We investigate them using quantum Monte Carlo for up to . We find evidence that for the phase diagram contains a critical phase that appears to be absent for . Within this phase, we measure the two-point correlation function and the excitation spectrum, which exhibit emergent conformal symmetry. We also extract the scaling dimension of a leading operator and find consistency with large- expectations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.11255,
title = {Generalizing Deconfined Criticality to 3D $N$-Flavor $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ Quantum Chromodynamics on the Fuzzy Sphere},
author = {Emilie Huffman and Zheng Zhou and Yin-Chen He and Johannes S. Hofmann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.11255},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
11 pages, 7 figures