The Matsubara-Fradkin Thermodynamical Quantization of Podolsky Electrodynamics

In this work we apply the Matsubara-Fradkin formalism and the Nakanishi's auxiliary field method to the quantization of the Podolsky electrodynamics in thermodynamic equilibrium. This approach allows us to write consistently the path integral representation for the partition function of gauge theories in a simple manner. Furthermore, we find the Dyson-Schwinger-Fradkin equations and the Ward-Fradkin-Takahashi identities for the Podolsky theory. We also write the most general form for the polarization tensor in thermodynamic equilibrium.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review

Heat transport through quantum Hall edge states: Tunneling versus capacitive coupling to reservoirs

We study the heat transport along an edge state of a two-dimensional electron gas in the quantum Hall regime, in contact to two reservoirs at different temperatures. We consider two exactly solvable models for the edge state coupled to the reservoirs. The first one corresponds to filling $\nu=1$ and tunneling coupling to the reservoirs. The second one corresponds to integer or fractional filling of the sequence $\nu=1/m$ (with $m$ odd), and capacitive coupling to the reservoirs. In both cases we solve the problem by means of non-equilibrium Green function formalism. We show that heat propagates chirally along the edge in the two setups. We identify two temperature regimes, defined by $\Delta$, the mean level spacing of the edge. At low temperatures, $T< \Delta$, finite size effects play an important role in heat transport, for both types of contacts. The nature of the contacts manifest themselves in different power laws for the thermal conductance as a function of the temperature. For capacitive couplings a highly non-universal behavior takes place, through a prefactor that depends on the length of the edge as well as on the coupling strengths and the filling fraction. For larger temperatures, $T>\Delta$, finite-size effects become irrelevant, but the heat transport strongly depends on the strength of the edge-reservoir interactions, in both cases. The thermal conductance for tunneling coupling grows linearly with $T$, whereas for the capacitive case it saturates to a value that depends on the coupling strengths and the filling factors of the edge and the contacts.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Photon and electron spectra in hot and dense QED

Photon and electron spectra in hot and dense QED are found in the high temperature limit for all |\q| using the Feynman gauge and the one-loop self-energy. All spectra are split by the medium and their branches develop the gap (the dynamical mass) at zero momentum. The photon spectrum has two branches (longitudinal and transverse) with the common mass; but electron spectrum is split on four branches which are well-separated for any |\q| including their |\q|=0 limits (their effective masses). These masses and the photon thermal mass are calculated explicitly and the different limits of spectrum branches are established in detail. The gauge invariance of the high-temperature spectra is briefly discussed.Comment: 9 pages, latex, no figure

The imbalanced antiferromagnet in an optical lattice

We study the rich properties of the imbalanced antiferromagnet in an optical lattice. We present its phase diagram, discuss spin waves and explore the emergence of topological excitations in two dimensions, known as merons, which are responsible for a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition that has never unambiguously been observed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, RevTe

Polaron action for multimode dispersive phonon systems

Path-integral approach to the tight-binding polaron is extended to multiple optical phonon modes of arbitrary dispersion and polarization. The non-linear lattice effects are neglected. Only one electron band is considered. The electron-phonon interaction is of the density-displacement type, but can be of arbitrary spatial range and shape. Feynman's analytical integration of ion trajectories is performed by transforming the electron-ion forces to the basis in which the phonon dynamical matrix is diagonal. The resulting polaron action is derived for the periodic and shifted boundary conditions in imaginary time. The former can be used for calculating polaron thermodynamics while the latter for the polaron mass and spectrum. The developed formalism is the analytical basis for numerical analysis of such models by path-integral Monte Carlo methods.Comment: 9 page

Worldsheet Form Factors in AdS/CFT

We formulate a set of consistency conditions appropriate to worldsheet form factors in the massive, integrable but non-relativistic, light-cone gauge fixed AdS(5) x S**5 string theory. We then perturbatively verify that these conditions hold, at tree level in the near-plane-wave limit and to one loop in the near-flat (Maldacena-Swanson) limit, for a number of specific cases. We further study the form factors in the weakly coupled dual description, verifying that the relevant conditions naturally hold for the one-loop Heisenberg spin-chain. Finally, we note that the near-plane-wave expressions for the form factors, when further expanded in small momentum or, equivalently, large charge density, reproduce the thermodynamic limit of the spin-chain results at leading order.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, v3: typos fixed, improved discussion of bound states and bound state axio

Local density of states of 1D Mott insulators and CDW states with a boundary

We determine the local density of states (LDOS) of one-dimensional incommensurate charge density wave (CDW) states in the presence of a strong impurity potential, which is modeled by a boundary. We find that the CDW gets pinned at the impurity, which results in a singularity in the Fourier transform of the LDOS at momentum 2k_F. At energies above the spin gap we observe dispersing features associated with the spin and charge degrees of freedom respectively. In the presence of an impurity magnetic field we observe the formation of a bound state localized at the impurity. All of our results carry over to the case of one dimensional Mott insulators by exchanging the roles of spin and charge degrees of freedom. We discuss the implications of our result for scanning tunneling microscopy experiments on spin-gap systems such as two-leg ladder cuprates and 1D Mott insulators

Renormalization Group Study of Magnetic Catalysis in the 3d Gross-Neveu Model

Magnetic catalysis describes the enhancement of symmetry breaking quantum fluctuations in chirally symmetric quantum field theories by the coupling of fermionic degrees of freedom to a magnetic background configuration. We use the functional renormalization group to investigate this phenomenon for interacting Dirac fermions propagating in (2+1)-dimensional spacetime, described by the Gross-Neveu model. We identify pointlike operators up to quartic fermionic terms that can be generated in the renormalization group flow by the presence of an external magnetic field. We employ the beta function for the fermionic coupling to quantitatively analyze the field dependence of the induced spectral gap. Within our pointlike truncation, the renormalization group flow provides a simple picture for magnetic catalysis.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, typos correcte

Topological insulating phases in mono and bilayer graphene

We analyze the influence of different quadratic interactions giving rise to time reversal invariant topological insulating phases in mono and bilayer graphene. We make use of the effective action formalism to determine the dependence of the Chern Simons coefficient on the different interactions

Incidence of the boundary shape in the effective theory of fractional quantum Hall edges

Starting from a microscopic description of a system of strongly interacting electrons in a strong magnetic field in a finite geometry, we construct the boundary low energy effective theory for a fractional quantum Hall droplet taking into account the effects of a smooth edge. The effective theory obtained is the standard chiral boson theory (chiral Luttinger theory) with an additional self-interacting term which is induced by the boundary. As an example of the consequences of this model, we show that such modification leads to a non-universal reduction in the tunnelling exponent which is independent of the filling fraction. This is in qualitative agreement with experiments, that systematically found exponents smaller than those predicted by the ordinary chiral Luttinger liquid theory.Comment: 12 pages, minor changes, replaced by published versio