Physics of topological materials have attracted much attention from both physicists and mathematicians recently. The index and the fermion number of Dirac fermions play an important role in topological insulators and topological superconductors. A zero-energy mode exists when Dirac fermions couple to objects with soliton-like structure such as kinks, vortices, monopoles, strings and branes. We discuss a system of Dirac fermions interacting with a vortex and a kink. This kind of systems will be realized on the surface of topological insulators where Dirac fermions exist. The fermion number is fractionalized and this is related to the presence of fermion zero-energy excitation modes. A zero-energy mode can be regarded as a Majorana fermion mode when the chemical potential vanishes. Our discussion includes the case where there is a half-flux quantum vortex associated with a kink in a magnetic field in a bilayer superconductor. A normalizable wave function of fermion zero-energy mode does not exist in the core of the half-flux quantum vortex. The index of Dirac operator and the fermion number have additional contributions when a soliton scalar field has a singularity.
We show that a vortex in a chiral p-wave superconductor, which has the p_{x}+ i p_{y}-wave pairing state and breaks U(1), parity and time reversal symmetry simultaneously, has fractional charge -{n e}/{4} and fractional angular momentum -n^{2}/{16} (n; vorticity). This suggests that the vortex could be anyon and could obey fractional statistics. Electromagnetic property of the vortex is also discussed and we find that an electric field is induced near the vortex core.
We have investigated the vortex in chiral superconductors, especially in p-wave case. In chiral superconductors the Cooper pair has orbital angular momentum hence U(1), parity (P) and time reversal symmetry (T) are broken simultaneously. We have found that the vortex has fractional charge and fractional angular momentum which comes from P- and T-violation. The fractionalization of the angular momentum suggests that the vortex could be anyon which obeys the fractional statistics. We have also pointed out that the electric field is induced near the vortex core and non-trivial electromagnetic phe…
An ideal gas of twodimensional Dirac fermions in the background of a pointlike magnetic vortex with arbitrary flux is considered. We find that this system acquires fractional electric charge at finite temperatures and determine the functional dependence of the thermal average and quadratic fluctuation of the charge on the temperature, the vortex flux, and the continuous parameter of the boundary condition at the location of the vortex.
We construct parity and time reversal invariant Maxwell-Chern-Simons gauge theory coupled to fermions with adding the parity partner to the matter and the gauge fields, which can give nontopological vortex solutions depending on the sign of the Chern-Simons coupling constant.
A massless spinor field is quantized in the background of a singular static magnetic vortex in 2+1-dimensional space-time. The method of self-adjoint extensions is employed to define the most general set of physically acceptable boundary conditions at the location of the vortex. Under these conditions, the vacuum energy density and effective potential in the vortex background are determined.
The method of self-adjoint extensions is employed to determine the vacuum quantum numbers induced by a singular static magnetic vortex in $2+1$-dimensional spinor electrodynamics. The results obtained are gauge-invariant and, for certain values of the extension parameter, both periodic in the value of the vortex flux and possessing definite parity with respect to the charge conjugation.
A massless spinor field is quantized in the background of a singular static magnetic vortex in 2+1-dimensional space-time. The method of self-adjoint extensions is employed to define the most general set of physically acceptable boundary conditions at the location of the vortex. Under these conditions, all effects of polarization of the massless fermionic vacuum in the vortex background are determined. Absence of anomaly is demonstrated, and patterns of both parity and chiral symmetry breaking are discussed.
The Dirac mass-vortex at the surface of a topological insulator or in graphene is considered. Within the linear approximation for the vortex amplitude's radial dependence, the spectrum is a series of degenerate bound states, which can be classified by a set of accidental SU(2) and supersymmetry generators (I. F. Herbut and C.-K. Lu, Phys. Rev. B 83 125412 (2011)). Here we discuss further the properties and manifestations of the supersymmetry of the vortex Hamiltonian, and point out some interesting analogies to the Runge-Lenz-Pauli vector in the non-relativistic hydrogen atom. Symmetry breakin…
In this work we consider fermionic zero modes in the external scalar and electromagnetic field forming the vortex on a sphere. We find the correspondence between the equations for the fermions in different dimensions, find their explicit expressions through the vortex fields in case of massless fermions, asymptotics near the poles in case of massive fermions and check the number of the solutions by proving index theorem for the fermions on a sphere. As a part of deriving the index, we write a detailed calculation of the Green function of the Heat equation.
We construct a molecule of fractional vortices with fractional topological lump charges as a baby Skyrmion with the unit topological lump charge in the anti-ferromagnetic (or XY) baby Skyrme model, that is, an O(3) sigma model with a four derivative term and an anti-ferromagnetic or XY-type potential term quadratic in fields. We further construct configurations with topological lump charges Q <= 7 and find that bound states of vortex molecules constitute regular polygons with 2Q vertices as vortices, where the rotational symmetry SO(2) in real space is spontaneously broken into a discrete subg…
We consider the gapless modes along the vortex line of the fully gapped, momentum independent paired states of three-dimensional Dirac fermions. For this, we require the solution of fermion zero modes of the corresponding two-dimensional problem in the presence of a point vortex, in the plane perpendicular to the vortex line. Based on the spectral symmetry requirement for the existence of the zero mode, we identify the appropriate generalized Jackiw-Rossi Hamiltonians for different paired states. A four-dimensional generalized Jackiw-Rossi Hamiltonian possesses spectral symmetry with respect t…
We considered the behaviour of Dirac fermion modes in the background of Euclidean dilaton black hole with an Abelian Higgs vortex passing through it. Fermions were coupled to the fields due to the superconducting string model. The case of nonextremal and extremal charged black hole in the theory with arbitrary coupling constant between dilaton field and U(1)-gauge field were considered. We elaborated the cases of zero and non-zero Dirac fermion modes. One finds the evidence that the system under consideration can support fermion fields acting like superconducting hair on black hole in the senc…
In order to study the rotating strongly coupled Bose-Einstein condensations(BEC), a holographic model defined in an AdS black hole that duals to a coupled two-component condensations in global $U(1)$ symmetry broken phase with intercomponent coupling $η$ and internal coherent coupling $ε$ is proposed. By solving the dynamics of the model, we study the process of formation and also the crossover from fractional to integer vortex phases. With changing only $η$ from zero to a finite value, fractional vortex lattices undergo a transition from hexagon to square lattice and finally to vortex sheets.…
Coherently coupled two-component Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) exhibit vortex confinement resembling quark confinement in Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD). Fractionally quantized vortices winding only in one of two components are attached by solitons, and they cannot stably exist alone. Possible stable states are "hadrons" either of mesonic type, i.e., molecules made of a vortex and anti-vortex in the same component connected by a soliton, or of baryonic type, i.e., molecules made of two vortices winding in two different components connected by a soliton. Mesonic molecules move straight with a …
The low energy quasiparticle dispersion of various narrow gap and gapless semiconductors are respectively described by three dimensional massive and massless Dirac fermions. The three dimensional Dirac spinor structure admits a time-reversal invariant, odd parity and Lorentz pseudoscalar topological superconducting state. Here we derive the effective field theory of this topological paired state for massless Dirac fermions in the presence of a fluctuating Zeeman term, which appears as a chiral gauge field. The effective theory consists of a mixed electromagnetic and chiral anomaly term in the …
The tachyon effective field theory describing the dynamics of a non-BPS D-brane in superstring theory has an infinitely thin but finite tension kink solution describing a codimension one BPS D-brane. We study the world-volume theory of massless modes on the kink, and show that the world volume action has precisely the Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) form without any higher derivative corrections. We generalize this to a vortex solution in the effective field theory on a brane-antibrane pair. As in the case of the kink, the vortex is infinitely thin, has finite energy density, and the world-volume acti…
Topological superconductors classified as type D admit zero-energy Majorana fermions inside vortex cores, and consequently the exchange statistics of vortices becomes non-Abelian, giving a promising example of non-Abelian anyons. On the other hand, types C and DIII admit zero-energy Dirac fermions inside vortex cores. It has been long believed that an essential condition for the realization of non-Abelian statistics is non-locality of Dirac fermions made of two Majorana fermions trapped inside two well-separated vortices as in the case of type D. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, however, …
Recently two fundamental topological properties of a magnetic vortex at the interface of a superconductor (SC) and a strong topological insulator (TI) have been established: the vortex carries both a Majorana zero-mode relevant for topological quantum computation and, for a time-reversal invariant TI, a charge of $e/4$. This fractional charge is caused by the axion term in the electromagnetic Lagrangian of the TI. Here we determine the angular momentum $J$ of the vortices, which in turn determines their mutual statistics. Solving the axion-London electrodynamic equations including screening in…
We study effects of the internal coherent (Rabi) coupling in vortex lattices in two-component BECs under rotation. We find how the vortex lattices without the Rabi coupling known before are connected to the Abrikosov lattice of integer vortices with increasing the Rabi coupling. We find that 1) for small Rabi couplings, fractional vortices in triangular or square lattice for small or large inter-component coupling constitute hexamers or tetramers, namely multi-dimer bound states made of six or four vortices, respectively, 2) these bound states are broken into a set of dimers at intermediate Ra…
Starting from Maxwell equations for media with no-stationary linear and nonlinear polarization, we obtain a set of nonlinear Maxwell amplitude equations in approximation of first order of the dispersion. After a special kind of complex presentation, the set of amplitude equations was written as a set of nonlinear Dirac equations. For broad-band pulses solitary solutions with half-integer spin and finite energy are found. The solutions correspond to electromagnetic wave with circular Poynting vector and zero divergence. These invisible for detectors waves are called dark states and the localize…
Thick oriented and nonoriented center-vortex $SU(N)$ configurations with fractional topological charge lumps
Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal Fluminense（弗鲁米嫩塞联邦大学物理研究所）；Instituto de Física Teórica, Universidade Estadual Paulista and South-American Institute of Fundamental Research ICTP-SAIFR（圣保罗州立大学理论物理研究所及南美基础研究所ICTP-SAIFR）；Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Tübingen（蒂宾根大学理论物理研究所）；Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo（圣保罗大学圣卡洛斯物理研究所）
We study fermionic zero modes in the self-dual vortex background on an extra two-dimensional Riemann surface in 5+1 dimensions. Using the generalized Abelian Higgs model, we obtain the inner topological structure of the self-dual vortex and establish the exact self-duality equation with topological term. Then we analyze the Dirac operator on an extra torus and the effective Lagrangian of four-dimensional fermions with the self-dual vortex background. Solving the Dirac equation, the fermionic zero modes on a torus with the self-dual vortex background in two simple cases are obtained.
We review the recently proposed Dirac composite fermion theory of the half-filled Landau level. This paper is based on a talk given at the Nambu Symposium at University of Chicago, March 11-13, 2016.
Orientifold $p$-planes with $p\le4$ have fractional D$p$-charges, and therefore appear inconsistent with Dirac quantization with respect to D$(6-p)$-branes. We explain in detail how this issue is resolved by taking into account the anomaly of the worldvolume fermions using the $η$ invariants. We also point out relationships to the classification of interacting fermionic symmetry protected topological phases. In an appendix, we point out that the duality group of type IIB string theory is the pin+ version of the double cover of $GL(2,\mathbb{Z})$.
We study theoretically a Fermi-Dirac atomic gas in a one-dimensional optical lattice coupled to a coherent electromagnetic field with a topologically nontrivial soliton phase profile. We argue that the resulting fractional eigenvalues of the particle number operator can be detected via light scattering. This could be a truly quantum mechanical measurement of the particle number fractionalization in a dilute atomic gas.
The classic composite fermion field theory (Ref. 1) builds up an excellent framework to uniformly study important physical objects and globally explain anomalous experimental phenomena in fractional quantum Hall physics while there are also inherent weaknesses. We present a nonperturbative emergent Dirac fermion theory from this strongly correlated composite fermion field theory, which overcomes these serious long-standing shortcomings. The particle-hole symmetry of Dirac equation resolves this particle-hole symmetry enigma in the composite fermion field theory. With the help of presented nume…
A gauge invariant reformulation of nonrelativistic fermions in background magnetic fields is used to obtain the Laughlin and Jain wave functions as exact results in Mean Field Theory (MFT). The gauge invariant framework trades the U(1) gauge symmetry for an emergent holomorphic symmetry and fluxes for vortices. The novel holomorphic invariance is used to develop an analytical method for attaching vortices to particles. Vortex attachment methods introduced in this paper are subsequently employed to construct the Read operator within a second quantized framework and obtain the Laughlin and Jain …
Particle-vortex duality is a powerful theoretical tool that has been used to study bosonic systems. Here we propose an analogous duality for Dirac fermions in 2+1 dimensions. The physics of a single Dirac cone is proposed to be described by a dual theory, QED3 with a dual Dirac fermion coupled to a gauge field. This duality is established by considering two alternate descriptions of the 3d topological insulator (TI) surface. The first description is the usual Dirac cone surface state. The second description is accessed via an electric-magnetic duality of the bulk TI coupled to a gauge field, w…
We show that the Dirac factorization method can be successfully employed to treat problems involving operators raised to a fractional power. The technique we adopt is based on an extension of the Pauli matrices and the properties of the roots of unity. We also comment about the possibility of using the method to linearize evolution equations containing the $n$-th root of differential operators and make a comparison with other techniques involving suitable transforms.
Despite fermion doubling, a two-dimensional quasi-relativistic spin-1/2 system can still lead to true fractionalization of electrical charge, when a massive ordered phase supports a "half-vortex". Such topological defect is possible when the order parameter in form of Dirac mass is described by two $U(1)$ angles, and each of them winds by an angle $π$ around a point. We demonstrate that such a mass configuration in an eight-dimensional Dirac Hamiltonian exhibits only a single bound zero mode, and therefore binds the charge of $e/2$. In graphene, for example, such an ordered phase is provided b…
We use Dirac quantization of flux to study fractional charges and axion angles θin interacting topological insulators with gapless surface modes protected by time-reversal symmetry. In interacting topological insulators, there are two types of fractional axion angle due to conventional odd and nontrivial even flux quantization at the boundary. On even flux quantization in a gapped time reversal invariant system, we show that there is a halved quarter fractional quantum Hall effect on the surface with Hall conductance of p/4q e2/2h with p and q odd integers. The gapless surface modes can be cha…
The spectrum of the fermion zero modes in the vicinity of the vortex with fractional winding number is discussed. This is inspired by the observation of the 1/2 vortex in high-temperature superconductors (Kirtley, et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76 (1996) 1336). The fractional value of the winding number leads to the fractional value of the invariant, which describes the topology of the energy spectrum of fermions. This results in the phenomenon of the "half-crossing": the spectrum approaches zero but does not cross it, being captured at the zero energy level. The similarity with the phenomenon of the…
Fermion-number fractionalization without breaking of time-reversal symmetry was recently demonstrated for a field theory in $(2+1)$-dimensional space and time that describes the couplings between massive Dirac fermions, a complex-valued Higgs field carrying an axial gauge charge of 2, and a U(1) axial gauge field. Charge fractionalization occurs whenever the Higgs field either supports vortices by itself, or when these vortices are accompanied by half-vortices in the axial gauge field. The fractional charge is computed by three different techniques. A formula for the fractional charge is given…
The study of vacancies in graphene is a topic of growing interest. A single vacancy induces a localized stable charge of order unity interacting with other charges of the conductor through an unscreened Coulomb potential. It also breaks the symmetry between the two triangular graphene sublattices hence inducing zero energy states at the Dirac points. Here we show the fractional and pseudo-scalar nature of this vacancy charge. A continuous Dirac model is presented which relates zero modes to vacuum fractional charge and to a parity anomaly. This relation constitutes an Index theorem and is achi…
So far, it is not well known how to deal with dissipative systems. There are many paths of investigation in the literature and none of them present a systematic and general procedure to tackle the problem. On the other hand, it is well known that the fractional formalism is a powerful alternative when treating dissipative problems. In this paper we propose a detailed way of attacking the issue using fractional calculus to construct an extension of the Dirac brackets in order to carry out the quantization of nonconservative theories through the standard canonical way. We believe that using the …
Starting from the geometrical interpretation of integrable vortices on two-dimensional hyperbolic space as conical singularities, we explain how this picture can be expressed in the language of Cartan connections, and how it can be lifted to the double cover of three-dimensional Anti-de Sitter space viewed as a trivial circle bundle over hyperbolic space. We show that vortex configurations on the double cover of AdS space give rise to solutions of the Dirac equation minimally coupled to the magnetic field of the vortex. After stereographic projection to (2+1)-dimensional Minkowski space we obt…
By means of variational methods, in this paper, we establish sharp existence results for solutions of the master equations governing `fractional multiple vortices.' In the doubly periodic situation, the conditions for existence are both necessary and sufficient and give the upper bounds for the vortex numbers in terms of the size of the periodic cell domain. In the planar situation, there is no restriction on the vortex numbers. In both situations, the solutions are uniquely determined by the prescribed locations and the local winding numbers of the vortices.
A recently constructed model for low lying excitations in bilayer graphene exhibits mid-gap, zero energy modes in its Dirac-like spectrum, when a scalar order parameter takes a vortex profile. We show that these modes persist when the dynamics is extended by a gauge field interaction, which also renders finite the vortex energy. The effect of the gauge field on the zero energy wave function is to shift the phase of the (damped) oscillatory component of the wave function in the absence of the gauge field.
