arXiv · hep-ph/9501280
Spontaneous Chiral-Symmetry Breaking in Three-Dimensional QED with a Chern--Simons Term
Abstract
In three-dimensional QED with a Chern--Simons term we study the phase structure associated with chiral-symmetry breaking in the framework of the Schwinger--Dyson equation. We give detailed analyses on the analytical and numerical solutions for the Schwinger--Dyson equation of the fermion propagator, where the nonlocal gauge-fixing procedure is adopted to avoid wave-function renormalization for the fermion. In the absence of the Chern--Simons term, there exists a finite critical number of four-component fermion flavors, at which a continuous (infinite-order) chiral phase transition takes place and below which the chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken. In the presence of the Chern--Simons term, we find that the spontaneous chiral-symmetry-breaking transition continues to exist, but the type of phase transition turns into a discontinuous first-order transition. A simple stability argument is given based on the effective potential, whose stationary point gives the solution of the Schwinger-Dyson equation.
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K. --I. Kondo, P. Maris. 1995-01-12. Spontaneous Chiral-Symmetry Breaking in Three-Dimensional QED with a Chern--Simons Term. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.52.1212
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