Tunable tachyon mass in the PT-broken massive Thirring model

TL;DR

This paper explores a non-Hermitian PT-symmetric extension of the massive Thirring model, revealing a new phase with spontaneously broken PT symmetry characterized by imaginary mass and tachyonic excitations, tunable via microscopic parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative analysis of the PT-broken phase in the massive Thirring model, showing the tunability of the imaginary mass and robustness against external gauge fields.

Findings

Discovery of a PT-broken phase with imaginary mass

Tunable effective mass through microscopic parameters

Robustness of the phase against external gauge fields

Abstract

We study the full phase diagram of a non-Hermitian PT-symmetric generalization of the paradigmatic two-dimensional massive Thirring model. Employing the non-perturbative functional renormalization-group, we find that the model hosts a regime where PT symmetry is spontaneously broken. This new phase is characterized by a relevant imaginary mass, corresponding to monstronic excitations displaying exponentially growing amplitudes for time-like intervals and tachyonic (Lieb-Robison-bound breaking, oscillatory) excitations for space-like intervals. Furthermore, since the phase manifests itself as an unconventional attractive spinodal fixed point, which is typically unreachable in finite real-life systems, we find that the effective renormalized mass reached can be tuned through the microscopic parameters of the model. Our results further predict that the new phase is robust to external gauge fields, contrary to the celebrated BKT phase in the PT unbroken sector. The gauge field then provides an effective and easy means to tune the renormalized imaginary mass through a wide range of values, and therefore the amplitude growth/oscillation rate of the corresponding excitations.