Chiral symmetry breaking in three dimensional QED

Abstract

Over the past few years three dimensional Quantum Electrodynamics (QED3) has attracted a lot of attention, because it may be an effective theory for the underdoped and non-superconducting region of the phase diagram of high Tc cuprate compounds. We present results from lattice simulations of the non-compact version of the theory in order to address the issue of whether chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken when the number of fermion flavours Nf is less than a critical value Nfc. Our results provide strong evidence that QED3 is chirally symmetric for Nf ≥ 1.5, implying that a pseudogap phase separates the superconducting phase from the antiferromagnetic phase.