Anomalous transport with overlap fermions

Anomalous correlators of vector and axial currents which enter the Kubo formulae for the chiral magnetic and the chiral separation conductivities are explicitly calculated for free overlap fermions on the lattice. The results are confronted with continuum calculations in the finite-temperature regularization, and a subtle point of such regularization for chiral magnetic conductivity related to the correct counting of the chiral states is highlighted. In agreement with some previous claims in the literature, we find that in a lattice regularization which respects gauge invariance, the chiral magnetic conductivity vanishes. We point out that the relation of anomalous transport coefficients to axial anomaly is nontrivial due to the non-commutativity of their infrared limit and the Taylor expansion in baryon or chiral chemical potential. In particular, we argue that the vector and axial Ward identities fix the asymptotic behavior of anomalous current-current correlators in the limit of large momenta. Basing on the work of Knecht et al. on the perturbative non-renormalization of the transverse part of the correlator of two vector and one axial currents, we demonstrate that the relation of the anomalous vector-vector correlator to axial anomaly holds perturbatively in massless QCD but might be subject to non-perturbative corrections. Finally, we identify kinematical regimes in which the anomalous transport coefficients can be extracted from lattice measurements.Comment: 25 pages RevTex, 7 figures; v2: published version, discussion of CME improve

Overlap Dirac operator with chiral chemical potential and Chiral Magnetic Effect on the lattice

A self-consistent construction of the overlap lattice Dirac operator coupled to chiral chemical potential is proposed. With the help of the constructed operator we compute electric current induced by a constant magnetic field (Chiral Magnetic Effect). We find that the result disagrees with the one predicted by anomaly-based arguments and comment on the origin of this discrepancy. We demonstrate that a straightforward lattice calculation with a constant magnetic field and a uniform chiral chemical potential in fact corresponds to an infrared singularity in the dimensionally reduced polarization tensor and hence yields the result which is extremely sensitive to infrared regulators such as finite volume or finite temperature.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the proceedings of the Lattice2013 conference (July 29th - August 3rd 2013, Mainz, Germany

Surface states of massive Dirac fermions with separated Weyl nodes

We derive the spectra of surface states for massive Dirac Hamiltonians with either momentum or energy separation between the left- and right-handed Weyl nodes. Momentum separation between the Weyl nodes corresponds to the explicitly broken time-reversal symmetry and the energy separation - to broken parity. Such Hamiltonians provide the simplest model description of Weyl semimetals. We find that the only effect of the energy separation between the Weyl nodes is to decrease the Fermi velocity in the linear dispersion relation of the surface states of massive Dirac Hamiltonian. In the case of broken time-reversal symmetry, the spectrum of surface states interpolates in a nontrivial way between the Fermi arc-type and the Dirac cone-type dispersion relations. In particular we find that for all values of the mass and the momentum separation between the Weyl nodes the surface states only exist in a strip of finite width in momentum space. We give also some simpler examples of surface states in order to make these notes more pedagogical.Comment: 10 pages AIP proceedings style, 1 figure; Submitted to the proceedings of the Confinement XI conference, Sept. 8-12, St. Petersburg, Russia; partly includes the material of the lectures given by the author at the 2014 Parma International School of Theoretical Physics; v2: updated reference

Applications of lattice QCD techniques for condensed matter systems

We review the application of lattice QCD techniques, most notably the Hybrid Monte-Carlo (HMC) simulations, to first-principle study of tight-binding models of crystalline solids with strong inter-electron interactions. After providing a basic introduction into the HMC algorithm as applied to condensed matter systems, we review HMC simulations of graphene, which in the recent years have helped to understand the semi-metal behavior of clean suspended graphene at the quantitative level. We also briefly summarize other novel physical results obtained in these simulations. Then we comment on the applicability of Hybrid Monte-Carlo to topological insulators and Dirac and Weyl semi-metals and highlight some of the relevant open physical problems. Finally, we also touch upon the lattice strong-coupling expansion technique as applied to condensed matter systems.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, Contribution to IJMPA special issue "Lattice gauge theory beyond QCD". List of references update