From Nordic Walking in Wess-Zumino-Witten Theory to Deconfined Pseudocriticality

by Bilal Hawashin (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

Thursday 16 May 2024, 14:15 → 15:30 Europe/Berlin

Abbeanum/Ground floor-HS 2 - Hörsaal 2 (TPI, FSU Jena)

An exciting class of non-Landau transitions are deconfined quantum critical points (DQCPs) which exhibit emergent fractional excitations and gauge fields at criticality. The primary example in the study of DQCPs has been a system of half-integer spins on a square lattice with competing interactions. Whether or not this system shows true criticality is a major open question in the field. The effective field theory describing the putative criticality is a 3D Wess-Zumino-Witten theory with target manifold S^4. I will discuss a first study of this model using the non-perturbative functional renormalization group and show that the Wess-Zumino-Witten term gives rise to two possible mechanisms resulting in pseudocriticality and drifting exponents: (1) the well-known Walking mechanism and (2) a new mechanism, dubbed Nordic Walking.