Integrable sigma models and perturbed coset models

Sigma models arise frequently in particle physics and condensed-matter physics as low-energy effective theories. In this paper I compute the exact free energy at any temperature in two hierarchies of integrable sigma models in two dimensions. These theories, the SU(N)/SO(N) and O(2P)/O(P) x O(P) models, are asymptotically free and exhibit charge fractionalization. When the instanton coupling theta=pi, they flow to the SU(N)_1 and O(2P)_1 conformal field theories, respectively. I also generalize the free energy computation to massive and massless perturbations of the coset conformal field theories SU(N)_k/SO(N)_{2k} and O(2P)_k/O(P)_k x O(P)_k.Comment: 39 pages, 6 figure

Differential equations and duality in massless integrable field theories at zero temperature

Functional relations play a key role in the study of integrable models. We argue in this paper that for massless field theories at zero temperature, these relations can in fact be interpreted as monodromy relations. Combined with a recently discovered duality, this gives a way to bypass the Bethe ansatz, and compute directly physical quantities as solutions of a linear differential equation, or as integrals over a hyperelliptic curve. We illustrate these ideas in details in the case of the $c=1$ theory, and the associated boundary sine-Gordon model.Comment: 18 pages, harvma

Free parafermions

The spectrum of the quantum Ising chain can be found by expressing the spins in terms of free fermions. An analogous transformation exists for clock chains with $Z_n$ symmetry, but is of less use because the resulting parafermionic operators remain interacting. Nonetheless, Baxter showed that a certain non-hermitian (but PT-symmetric) clock Hamiltonian is "free", in the sense that the entire spectrum is found in terms of independent energy levels, with the striking feature that there are $n$ possibilities for occupying each level. Here I show this directly explicitly finding shift operators obeying a $Z_n$ generalization of the Clifford algebra. I also find higher Hamiltonians that commute with Baxter's and prove their spectrum comes from the same set of energy levels. This thus provides an explicit notion of a "free parafermion". A byproduct is an elegant method for the solution of the Ising/Kitaev chain with spatially varying couplings.Comment: 44 pages. v2: minor rewriting, added several reference

Supersymmetric Models for Fermions on a Lattice

We investigate the large-N behaviour of simple examples of supersymmetric interactions for fermions on a lattice. Witten's supersymmetric quantum mechanics and the BCS model appear just as two different aspects of one and the same model. For the BCS model, supersymmetry is only respected in a coherent superposition of Bogoliubov states. In this coherent superposition mesoscopic observables show better stability properties than in a Bogoliubov state.Comment: 17 pages, LATeX, no figure

On the integrability of N=2 Landau-Ginzburg models: A graph generalization of the Yang-Baxter equation

The study of the integrability properties of the N=2 Landau- Ginzburg models leads naturally to a graph generalization of the Yang-Baxter equation which synthetizes the well known vertex and RSOS Yang-Baxter equations. A non trivial solution of this equation is found for the $t_2$ perturbation of the A-models, which turns out to be intimately related to the Boltzmann weights of a Chiral- Potts model.Comment: 13 pages,latex,cern-th.6963/93, UGVA 07/622/9