Abstract
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, , with again a single Dirac fermion but coupled to a gauge field. This duality is established by considering two alternate descriptions of the three-dimensional topological insulator (TI) surface. The first description is the usual Dirac fermion surface state. The dual description is accessed via an electric-magnetic duality of the bulk TI coupled to a gauge field, which maps it to a gauged chiral topological insulator. This alternate description ultimately leads to a new surface theory, , which provides a simple description of otherwise intractable interacting electronic states. For example, an explicit derivation of the T-Pfaffian state, a proposed surface topological order of the TI, is obtained by simply pair condensing the dual fermions. The roles of time-reversal and particle-hole symmetries are exchanged by the duality, which connects some of our results to a recent conjecture by Son on particle-hole symmetric quantum Hall states.
- Received 15 April 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.245151
©2016 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Viewpoint
Fermionic Vortices Find their Dual
Published 27 June 2016
Theoretical work reveals a surprising relationship between the physics of fermionic vortices and quantum electrodynamics.
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