Permanent confinement in the compact QED3 with fermionic matter

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that compact QED3 with massless fermions remains confining due to dipole screening effects, impacting the understanding of phase structure and chiral symmetry breaking in the theory.

Contribution

It shows that fermionic matter induces a screening mechanism that preserves confinement in compact QED3, challenging previous assumptions about monopole interactions.

Findings

Fermions cause screening that maintains Coulomb interactions at large distances.

The theory remains confining despite logarithmic monopole interactions.

Implications for chiral symmetry breaking and phase diagram are discussed.

Abstract

We argue that the compact three dimensional electrodynamics with massless fermions is always confining, in spite of the bare interaction between the magnetic monopoles being rendered logarithmic by fermions. The effect is caused by screening by other dipoles, which transforms the logarithmic back into the Coulomb interaction at large distances. Possible implications for the chiral symmetry breaking for fermions are discussed, and the global phase diagram of the theory is proposed.