$\pi$ Flux Phase and Superconductivity for Lattice Fermions Coupled to Classical Gauge Fields

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in a lattice fermion system with BCS-type pairing coupled to classical U(1) gauge fields, a specific gauge configuration with $$ flux minimizes energy and sustains superconducting long-range order, highlighting gauge invariance of certain correlations.

Contribution

It proves the ground state exhibits superconducting long-range order under a specific gauge configuration with $$ flux, extending previous work to include classical gauge fields.

Findings

The $$ flux configuration minimizes the ground-state energy.

Superconducting long-range order persists in the gauged model.

Gauge-invariant string Cooper pair correlations show long-range order.

Abstract

We study superconducting lattice fermions coupled to classical gauge fields. Namely, without the gauge fields, the lattice fermions show superconducting long-range order. In the previous paper, the existence of the long-range order was proved by the present author. This paper is the continuing part of the previous one. More precisely, the interactions between fermions were assumed to be a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-type pairing which is a nearest-neighbour two-body interaction on the hypercubic lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$ with the dimension $d\ge 3$. In the present paper, we deal with the corresponding gauged model by introducing classical U(1) gauge fields. We prove that a certain configuration of gauge fields which yields the $\pi$ flux for all the plaquettes in the lattice minimizes the ground-state energy of the fermion system. Since this configuration of the gauge fields exactly coincides with the hopping amplitudes of the Hamiltonian of the previous paper, the ground state of the whole system shows superconducting long-range order. Any configuration of gauge fields which is gauge-equivalent to this special configuration of the gauge fields also yields another ground state. However, if the Cooper pair correlations are averaged over the gauge-equivalent class, then they are vanishing except for the on-site correlation because the Cooper pair correlations are not necessarily gauge invariant. On the other hand, the string Cooper pair correlations which are gauge invariant always show the same long-range order for any configuration of gauge fields in the gauge-equivalent class.