2D Fermions and Statistical Mechanics: Critical Dimers and Dirac Fermions in a background gauge field

TL;DR

This paper establishes a detailed correspondence between the dimer model on isoradial graphs with gauge fields and 2D Dirac fermions, generalizing previous results and introducing new series expansions of tau functions.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous match of cluster expansions between the dimer model and Dirac fermions with gauge fields, including novel series expansions of tau functions.

Findings

Cluster expansion of dimer model matches Dirac fermion tau function expansion.

Explicit evaluation of cluster terms using lattice identities.

Introduction of two new series expansions of tau functions.

Abstract

In the limit of the lattice spacing going to zero, we consider the dimer model on isoradial graphs in the presence of singular $SL(N,\mathbb{C})$ gauge fields flat away from a set of punctures. We consider the cluster expansion of this twisted dimer partition function show it matches an analogous cluster expansion of the 2D Dirac partition function in the presence of this gauge field. The latter is often referred to as a tau function. This reproduces and generalizes various computations of Dub\'edat (J. Eur. Math. Soc. 21 (2019), no. 1, pp. 1-54). In particular, both sides' cluster expansion are matched up term-by-term and each term is shown to equal a sum of a particular holomorphic integral and its conjugate. On the dimer side, we evaluate the terms in the expansion using various exact lattice-level identities of discrete exponential functions and the inverse Kasteleyn matrix. On the fermion side, the cluster expansion leads us to two novel series expansions of tau functions, one involving the Fuschian representation and one involving the monodromy representation.