BULK PROPERTIES OF CHERN–SIMONS SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AT FINITE TEMPERATURES

Abstract

We study Chern–Simons (CS) superconductivity at finite temperatures for a system of two dimensional 'spin-1/2' fermions which are minimally coupled to both the CS and Maxwell gauge fields. We evaluate the electromagnetic response of the system as well as its thermodynamic properties within the mean field formalism. Our results for magnetic susceptibility, conductivity and dielectric constant show a sharp transition to the normal state over a narrow range of temperatures. The vanishing of the off-diagonal conductivity due to a corresponding fall in parity and time reversal [Formula: see text] violating correlation factor may be interpreted to be an effective restoration of [Formula: see text] symmetries in the macroscopic state. We find that the spin correlation function has a negligibly small numerical value at all temperatures, which implies that the thermal fluctuations dominate over the quantum fluctuations in the spin state. To explore the validity of mean field theory at high temperatures (HT), we compare the responses as well as the form factors for both mean field and free field (perturbative) formalism and find that they are essentially equivalent at HT. Finally, we present a coarse criterion for the validity of the mean field ansatz by regulating the CS Lagrangian with a Maxwell term.