arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Aleksey Cherman.
Because it offers exactly-integer topological quantities, the modified Villain discretization offers a route to correct anomaly structure at finite lattice spacing. I will present a 4-dimensional purely-bosonic modified Villain model with an ABJ-type vector-vector-axial anomaly. The model may have a direct continuous phase transition from one SSB phase to another, giving hope of yielding 4D CFT with a VVA anomaly.
Thanks to bosonization, bosonic lattice models can offer a lattice regularization of chiral fermions. We construct chiral lattice fermion operators in the 2D modified Villain scalar model and evaluate their correlation functions. This microscopic bosonic model has an ultra-local action and an ultra-local symmetry that realizes the fermionic chiral symmetry under bosonization. The reconstructed lattice Dirac operator has no doublers, but is consistent with the Nielsen-Ninomiya theorem because it turns out to be non-local. The non-locality of this derived quantity at finite lattice spacing does not pose any obstructions to gauging the non-anomalous symmetries of the model, which is itself ultra-local.
Recent lattice evidence suggests the chiral phase transition in QCD is second-order for $N_f \ge 2$ massless flavors. We constrain CFT descriptions of a critical line in temperature $T$ and imaginary baryon chemical potential $θ_B = iμ_B/T$. An 't Hooft anomaly at general $θ_B$ constrains the transition even at $θ_B = 0$, leaving only three minimal scenarios. The best-motivated scenario for $N_f\ge3$, and perhaps also $N_f = 2$, is beyond Ginzburg-Landau, featuring a conformal manifold of $θ_B$-dependent universality classes with an exactly marginal operator related to baryon density.
We introduce a large class of $θ$ angles in quantum field theory that we call symmetry $θ$ angles. Unlike conventional $θ$ angles whose definition depends on a choice of a path integral, symmetry $θ$ angles are intrinsic parameters of a quantum field theory that depend only on its symmetries. A frequent consequence of symmetry $θ$ angles is a phenomenon we call the topological Witten effect, which is a generalization of the standard Witten effect. Topological Witten effects modify which charged operators are attached to topological operators as a function of $θ$. Physically, topological Witten effects induce generalized Aharonov-Bohm effects. We show that these new $θ$ angles and Witten effects can appear in many familiar field theories.
We discuss unusual $θ$ terms that can appear in field theories that allow global vortices. These `Cheshire $θ$ terms' induce Aharonov-Bohm effects for some particles that move around vortices. For example, a Cheshire $θ$ term can appear in QCD coupled to an axion and induces Aharonov-Bohm effects for baryons and leptons moving around axion strings.
The BKT transition in low-dimensional systems with a $U(1)$ global symmetry separates a gapless conformal phase from a trivially gapped, disordered phase, and is driven by vortex proliferation. Recent developments in modified Villain discretizations provide a class of lattice models which have a $\mathbb{Z}_W$ global symmetry that counts vortices mod W, mixed 't Hooft anomalies, and persistent order even at finite lattice spacing. While there is no fully-disordered phase (except in the original BKT limit $W=1$) there is still a phase boundary which separates gapped ordered phases from gapless phases. I'll describe a numerical Monte Carlo exploration of these phenomena.
We construct symmetry-preserving lattice regularizations of 2d QED with one and two flavors of Dirac fermions, as well as the `3450' chiral gauge theory, by leveraging bosonization and recently-proposed modifications of Villain-type lattice actions. The internal global symmetries act just as locally on the lattice as they do in the continuum, the anomalies are reproduced at finite lattice spacing, and in each case we find a sign-problem-free dual formulation.
We explore the necessary conditions for 1-form symmetries to emerge in the long-distance limit when they are explicitly broken at short distances. A minimal requirement is that there exist operators which become topological at long distances and that these operators have non-trivial correlation functions. These criteria are obeyed when the would-be emergent symmetry is spontaneously broken, or is involved in 't Hooft anomalies. On the other hand, confinement, i.e. a phase with unbroken 1-form symmetry, is nearly incompatible with the emergence of 1-form symmetries. We comment on some implications of our results for QCD as well as the idea of Higgs-confinement continuity.
We discuss the long-distance physics of 2d adjoint QCD when it is viewed as an effective field theory, and determine the beta functions for its two classically-marginal four-fermi operators. These four-fermion terms preserve the invertible symmetries of the kinetic terms, and they have important implications at long distances if they are generated at short distances. Our results are likely to be important for future numerical lattice Monte Carlo studies of 2d adjoint QCD.
We study a $2{+}1$D lattice gauge theory with fundamental representation scalar fields which has both Higgs and confining regimes with a spontaneously-broken $U(1)$ $0$-form symmetry. We show that the Higgs and confining regimes may be distinguished by a natural gauge invariant observable: the phase $Ω$ of a correlation function of a vortex line operator linking with an electric Wilson line. We employ dualities and strong coupling expansions to analytically explore parameter regimes which were inaccessible in previous continuum calculations, and discuss possible implications for the phase diagram.
We show that large N QCD does not have an emergent $\mathbb{Z}_N$ 1-form symmetry. Our results suggest that a symmetry-based understanding of (approximate) confinement in QCD would require some further generalization of the notion of generalized global symmetries.
We consider the massless charge-$N$ Schwinger model and its deformation with two four-fermion operators. Without the deformations, this model exhibits chiral symmetry breaking without confinement. It is usually asserted that the massless Schwinger model is always deconfined and a string tension emerges only when a mass for the fermion field is turned on. We show that in the presence of these four-fermion operators, the massless theory can in fact confine. One of the four-fermion deformations is chirally neutral, and is a marginal deformation. The other operator can be relevant or irrelevant, and respects a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ subgroup of chiral symmetry for even $N$, hence forbidding a mass term. When it is relevant, even the exactly massless theory exhibits both confinement and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. The construction is analogous to QCD(adj) in 2d. While the theory without four-fermion deformations is deconfined, the theory with these deformations is generically in a confining phase. We study the model on $\mathbb{R}^2$ using bosonization, and also analyze the mechanism of confinement on $\mathbb{R}\times S^1$, where we find that confinement is driven by fractional instantons.
Vortices in spin-$0$ superfluids generically carry magnetic fields inside their cores, so that even neutral superfluid vortices may be thought of as magnetic flux tubes. We give a systematic analysis of this `vortex magnetic effect' using effective field theory, clarifying earlier literature on the subject. Our analysis shows that in superfluid Helium-$4$ the vortex magnetic effect may be large enough to be experimentally detectable.
QFTs with local topological operators feature unusual sectors called "universes," which are separated by infinite-tension domain walls. We show that such systems have relevant deformations with exactly-calculable effects. These deformations allow one to dial the vacuum energy densities of the universes. We describe applications of these deformations to confinement in 2d gauge theories, as well as a curious violation of the effective field theory naturalness principle.
We consider examples of long-lived false vacua in quantum field theory that arise from so-called `universes'. These false vacua are protected by a $(d-1)$-form global symmetry, where $d$ is the dimension of spacetime. The lifetimes of the false vacua are set by UV data: the tension of $(d-2)$-branes charged under a $(d-2)$-form gauge symmetry. The lifetimes can be made parametrically long even when the difference in energy density between the false and true vacua is large compared to the natural scales of the field theory. We study examples of near-eternal false vacua in abelian gauge theories in two dimensions and in four-dimensional QCD. In both cases, it is possible to view the $(d-1)$-form symmetries as arising from a modification of the sum over instantons. We find that the modification of the instanton sum in 4d QCD leads to a higher-group symmetry structure involving the 3-form and conventional 0-form global symmetries.
Gauge theories with confining phases at low temperatures tend to deconfine at high temperatures. In some cases, for example in supersymmetric theories, confinement can persist for all temperatures provided the partition function includes a grading by $(-1)^F$. When it is possible to define partition functions which smoothly interpolate between no grading and $(-1)^F$ grading, it is natural to ask if there are other choices of grading that have the same effect as $(-1)^F$ on confinement. We explore how this works for $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM on $S^1\times S^3$ in the large $N$ limit at both small and large coupling. We find evidence for a continuous range of grading parameters that preserve confinement for all temperatures at large coupling, while at small coupling only a discrete set of gradings preserves confinement.
We discuss the conditions under which Higgs and confining regimes in gauge theories with fundamental representation matter fields can be sharply distinguished. It is widely believed that these regimes are smoothly connected unless they are distinguished by the realization of global symmetries. However, we show that when a $U(1)$ global symmetry is spontaneously broken in \emph{both} the confining and Higgs regimes, the two phases can be separated by a phase boundary. The phase transition between the two regimes may be detected by a novel topological vortex order parameter. We first illustrate these ideas by explicit calculations in gauge theories in three spacetime dimensions. Then we show how our analysis generalizes to four dimensions, where it implies that nuclear matter and quark matter are sharply distinct phases of QCD with an approximate $SU(3)$ flavor symmetry.
We show that $2$d adjoint QCD, an $SU(N)$ gauge theory with one massless adjoint Majorana fermion, has a variety of mixed 't Hooft anomalies. The anomalies are derived using a recent mod $2$ index theorem and its generalization that incorporates 't Hooft flux. Anomaly matching and dynamical considerations are used to determine the ground-state structure of the theory. The anomalies, which are present for most values of $N$, are matched by spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. We find that massless $2$d adjoint QCD confines for $N >2$, except for test charges of $N$-ality $N/2$, which are deconfined. In other words, $\mathbb Z_N$ center symmetry is unbroken for odd $N$ and spontaneously broken to $\mathbb Z_{N/2}$ for even $N$. All of these results are confirmed by explicit calculations on small $\mathbb{R}\times S^1$. We also show that this non-supersymmetric theory exhibits exact Bose-Fermi degeneracies for all states, including the vacua, when $N$ is even. Furthermore, for most values of $N$, $2$d massive adjoint QCD describes a non-trivial symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase of matter, including certain cases where the number of interacting Majorana fermions is a multiple of $8$. As a result, it fits into the classification of $(1+1)$d SPT phases of interacting Majorana fermions in an interesting way.