Fractionalized Metals and Superconductors in Three Dimensions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a gauge theory framework for three-dimensional fractionalized metals and superconductors, revealing novel phases like fractional Weyl semimetals and chiral Luttinger liquids, with proposed experimental detection methods.

Contribution

It formulates a gauge theory describing fractionalized phases in 3D metals and superconductors, including new phases like fractional Weyl semimetals and chiral Luttinger liquids.

Findings

Introduction of gauge theory for 3D fractionalized metals and superconductors

Prediction of fractional Weyl semimetals and chiral Luttinger liquids

Proposal of experiments to detect fractionalized phases

Abstract

We study three-dimensional metals with nontrivial correlation functions and fractionalized excitations. We formulate for such states a gauge theory, which also naturally describes the fractional quantization of chiral anomaly. We also study fractional superconductors in this description. This formulation leads to the "three-dimensional chiral Luttinger liquids" and fractionalized Weyl semimetals, which can arise in both fermion and boson models. We also propose experiments to detect these fractionalized phases.