Influence of boson mass on chiral phase transition inQED3

Abstract

Based on the truncated Dyson-Schwinger equations for the fermion propagator with $N$ fermion flavors at zero temperature, the chiral phase transition of quantum electrodynamics in $2+1$ dimensions (${\mathrm{QED}}_{3}$) with boson mass\char22{}which is obtained via the Anderson-Higgs mechanism\char22{}is investigated. In the chiral limit, we find that the critical behavior of ${\mathrm{QED}}_{3}$ with a massless boson is different from that with a massive boson: the chiral phase transition in the presence of a nonzero boson mass reveals the typical second-order phase transition, at either the critical boson mass or a critical number of fermion flavors, while for a vanishing boson mass it exhibits a higher than second-order phase transition at the critical number of fermion flavors. Furthermore, it is shown that the system undergoes a crossover behavior from a small number of fermion flavors or boson mass to its larger one beyond the chiral limit.