Another look at charge fractionalization at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper investigates how charge fractionalization phenomena in quantum field theories diminish with increasing temperature, showing that fractional fermion numbers decrease and vanish at high temperatures, with implications for related topological terms.

Contribution

The study provides a detailed analysis of charge fractionalization at finite temperature within a framework linking fermion number and the chiral anomaly, extending previous results.

Findings

Fractional fermion number decreases as temperature increases.

Induced fermion number vanishes at infinite temperature.

Behavior of the induced Chern-Simons term at finite temperature is analyzed.

Abstract

We study again the phenomenon of charge fractionalization at finite temperature. Our calculations are done in a framework in which the connection between the induced fermion number and the chiral anomaly is manifest. We find that the fractional fermion number induced on a soliton decreases as temperature rises and vanishes at infinite temperature at one-loop level. These results are consistent with previous studies. As an application of our approach, we have also studied the behavior of the induced Chern-Simons term in the (2+1)-dimensional QED at finite temperature.