2018/08/31 by David Dudal, D. Dudal, Ana Júlia Mizher +3 · 3 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Beta function (physics) #Boundary value problem #Conformal field theory #Conformal map #Conformal symmetry #Graphene research and applications #Mathematical physics #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Physics #Quantum #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum field theory #Quantum gravity #Quantum mechanics #Spinor #Theoretical physics #Thermal quantum field theory #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.99.045017
published as Phys. Rev. D 99, 045017 (2019) · v2: improved discussion about boundary conditions and added references
openalex created_date 2018/08/22 · arxiv created 2018/11/27 · openalex publication_date 2019/02/25 · arxiv updated 2019/03/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
An effective quantum field theory description of graphene in the ultrarelativistic regime is given by reduced quantum electrodynamics (QED) also known as pseudo QED also known as mixed-dimensional QED. It has been speculated in the literature that reduced QED constitutes an example of a specific class of hard-to-find theories: an interacting conformal field theories (CFT) in more than two dimensions. This speculation was based on two-loop perturbation theory. Here, we give a proof of this feature, namely the exact vanishing of the \ensuremathβ-function, thereby showing that reduced QED can effectively be considered as an interacting (boundary) CFT, underpinning recent work in this area. The argument, valid for both two- and four-component spinors, also naturally extends to an exactly marginal deformation of reduced QED, thence resulting in a nonsupersymmetric conformal manifold. The latter corresponds to boundary layer fermions between two different dielectric half-spaces.