Abstract
We analyze a hydrodynamical model of a polar fluid in (3 + 1)-dimensional spacetime. We explore a spacetime symmetry (volume-preserving diffeomorphisms) to construct an effective description of this fluid in terms of a topological BF theory. The two degrees of freedom of the BF theory are associated with the mass (charge) flows of the fluid and its polarization vorticities. We discuss the quantization of this hydrodynamic theory, which generically allows for fractionalized excitations. We propose an extension of the Girvin-MacDonald-Platzman algebra to (3 + 1)-dimensional spacetime by the inclusion of the vortex-density operator in addition to the usual charge density operator and show that the same algebra is obeyed by massive Dirac fermions that represent the bulk of topological insulators in three-dimensional space.
- Received 2 September 2014
- Revised 18 November 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.90.235118
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