Department of Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Dec 13;123(24):241602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.241602.
I consider quantum electrodynamics with many electrons in 2+1 space-time dimensions at finite temperature. The relevant dimensionless interaction parameter for this theory is the fine structure constant divided by the temperature. The theory is solvable at any value of the coupling, in particular for very weak (high temperature) and infinitely strong coupling (corresponding to the zero temperature limit). Concentrating on the photon, each of its physical degrees of freedom at infinite coupling only contributes half of the free-theory value to the entropy. These fractional degrees of freedom are reminiscent of what has been observed in other strongly coupled systems (such as N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory), and bear similarity to the fractional quantum Hall effect, potentially suggesting connections between these phenomena. The results found for (2+1)-dimensional QED are fully consistent with the expectations from particle-vortex duality.
我研究了 2+1 时空维度下有限温度的多电子量子电动力学。该理论的相关无量纲相互作用参数是精细结构常数除以温度。在任何耦合值下，该理论都是可解的，特别是在非常弱（高温）和无穷强耦合（对应于零温极限）的情况下。专注于光子，在无限耦合下，其每个物理自由度仅对熵的自由理论值贡献一半。这些分数自由度让人想起在其他强耦合系统（如 N=4 超对称杨-米尔斯理论）中观察到的情况，并且与分数量子霍尔效应相似，可能暗示了这些现象之间的联系。在（2+1）-维 QED 中发现的结果与粒子-涡旋对偶的预期完全一致。
