Skip to main content
We gratefully acknowledge support from the Simons Foundation, member institutions, and all contributors. Donate
arXiv logo
Cornell University Logo

Condensed Matter > Strongly Correlated Electrons

arXiv:1105.5375 (cond-mat)
[Submitted on 26 May 2011 (v1), last revised 28 Sep 2011 (this version, v2)]

Title:The Fate of the Photon in Topological Matter: Superconductivity, Confinement and the Vortex Quantum Hall Effect

Authors:M.C. Diamantini, C.A. Trugenberger
View PDF
Abstract:Topological matter is characterized by the presence of a topological BF term in its long-distance effective action. Topological defects due to the compactness of the U(1) gauge fields induce quantum phase transitions between topological insulators, topological superconductors and topological confinement. In conventional superconductivity, due to spontaneous symmetry breaking, the photon acquires a mass due to the Anderson-Higgs mechanism. In this paper we derive the corresponding effective actions for the electromagnetic field in topological superconductors and topological confinement phases. In topological superconductors magnetic flux is confined and the photon acquires a topological mass through the BF mechanism: no symmetry breaking is involved, the ground state has topological order and the transition is induced by quantum fluctuations. In topological confinement, instead, electric charge is linearly confined and the photon becomes a massive antisymmetric tensor via the Stückelberg mechanism. Oblique confinement phases arise when the string condensate carries both magnetic and electric flux (dyonic strings). Such phases are characterized by a vortex quantum Hall effect potentially relevant for the dissipationless transport of information stored on vortices.
Comments: 5 pages, no figures
Subjects: Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
Cite as: arXiv:1105.5375 [cond-mat.str-el]
  (or arXiv:1105.5375v2 [cond-mat.str-el] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1105.5375
Journal reference: Phys. Rev. B 84 (2011) 094520
Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.84.094520

Submission history

From: Maria Cristina Diamantini [view email]
[v1] Thu, 26 May 2011 19:04:59 UTC (9 KB)
[v2] Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:11:43 UTC (10 KB)
Full-text links:

Access Paper:

  • View PDF
  • TeX Source
  • Other Formats
view license
Current browse context:
cond-mat.str-el
< prev   |   next >
new | recent | 2011-05
Change to browse by:
cond-mat
hep-th

References & Citations

export BibTeX citation

Bookmark

BibSonomy logo Reddit logo

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?)
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)

Demos

Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)

Recommenders and Search Tools

Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?)

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)