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The phase diagram of quantum electrodynamics in three space-time dimensions as a function of fermion flavor number N exhibits two well-known phases: at large N > Nc1 the system is in a conformal gapless state, while for small N < Nc2 the fermions are expected to develop a dynamical mass due to spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. Using epsilon expansion near the lower critical dimension of two, in combination with the recent results on the generalization of the F theorem to continuous dimension, we show that Nc1 > Nc2. There is therefore an intermediate range of values of N at which a third phase is stabilized. We demonstrate that this phase is characterized by spontaneous breaking of Lorentz symmetry, in which a composite vector boson field acquires a vacuum expectation value with the fermions and the photon remaining massless.

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Lukas Janssen, TU Dresden
Seminar Room 0.03, ETP
Contact: Dietrich Roscher