Collusion of Interactions and Disorder at the Superfluid-Insulator Transition: A Dirty 2d Quantum Critical Point

ORAL

Abstract

We study the stability of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point of the quantum O(2N) vector model to quenched disorder in the large-N limit. While a random mass is strongly relevant at the Gaussian fixed point, its effect is screened by the strong interactions of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point. This enables a perturbative renormalization group study of the interplay of disorder and interactions about this fixed point. We show that, in contrast to the spiralling flows obtained in earlier double-ε expansions, the theory flows directly to a quantum critical point characterized by finite disorder and interactions. The critical exponents we obtain for this transition are in remarkable agreement with numerical studies of the superfluid-Mott glass transition. We additionally discuss the stability of this fixed point to scalar and vector potential disorder and use proposed boson-fermion dualities to make conjectures regarding the effects of weak disorder on dual Abelian Higgs and Chern-Simons-Dirac fermion theories when N=1.

*NSF GRFP under Grant No. DGE-1144245, the Kadanoff Fellowship at the University of Chicago, the Pappalardo Fellowship at MIT, the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech, and the Caltech IQIM (Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Grant GBMF1250).

Presenters

  • Hart Goldman

    • Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Authors

  • Hart Goldman

    • Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Alex Thomson

    • Caltech
    • California Institute of Technology
  • Laimei Nie

    • University of Chicago
  • Zhen Bi

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology