Semimetal-superfluid quantum phase transitions in 2D and 3D lattices with Dirac points

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Dirac points influence superfluid phase transitions in 2D and 3D lattices with synthetic gauge fields, revealing continuous variation of superfluid properties and quantum phase transitions with dimensionality and interaction strength.

Contribution

It introduces a mean field analysis of superfluid properties in lattices with Dirac points, exploring the effects of dimensionality and lattice interpolation on quantum phase transitions.

Findings

Superfluid gap and critical temperature vary continuously along lattice interpolations.

A quantum phase transition occurs at a critical interaction U_c in 2D and 3D.

Critical exponent for the gap changes from 1 to 1/2 with increasing t_z.

Abstract

We study the superfluid properties of attractively interacting fermions hopping in a family of 2D and 3D lattices in the presence of synthetic gauge fields having \pi-flux per plaquette. The reason for such a choice is that the \pi-flux cubic lattice displays Dirac points and that decreasing the hopping coefficient in a spatial direction (say, t_z) these Dirac points are unaltered: it is then possible to study the 3D-2D interpolation towards the \pi-flux square lattice. We also consider the lattice configuration providing the continuous interpolation between the 2D \pi-flux square lattice and the honeycomb geometry. We investigate by a mean field analysis the effects of interaction and dimensionality on the superfluid gap, chemical potential and critical temperature, showing that these quantities continuously vary along the patterns of interpolation. In the two-dimensional cases at zero temperature and at half filling there is a quantum phase transition occurring at a critical (negative) interaction U_c presenting a linear critical exponent for the gap as a function of |U-U_c|. We show that in three dimensions this quantum phase transition is again retrieved, pointing out that the critical exponent for the gap changes from 1 to 1/2 for each finite value of t_z.