Self-duality protected multicriticality in deconfined quantum phase transitions

Abstract

Duality places an important constraint on the renormalization group flows and the phase diagrams. For self-dual theories, the self-duality can be promoted as a symmetry, this leads to the multicriticalities. This work investigates a description of the deconfined quantum criticality, the ${N}_{f}=2\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}{\mathrm{QED}}_{3}$, as an example of self-dual theories, and its multicritical behavior under perturbative deformations. The multicriticality is described by the theory with Gross-Neveu couplings and falls in a different universality class than the standard deconfined quantum criticality. We systematically calculate the scaling dimensions of various operators in the 3D quantum electrodynamics with the Chern-Simons term and Gross-Neveu couplings by the large-$N$ renormalization group analysis. Specifically, we find certain Drelativistic four-fermion interactions which correspond to the dimer-dimer interactions in the lattice model will drive the deconfined quantum criticality to the first-order transition, this result is consistent with previous numerical studies.