Deconfined criticality critically defined

TL;DR

This paper characterizes deconfined quantum critical points, identifying key physical properties that distinguish them from conventional critical points, despite both being strongly coupled and lacking sharp quasiparticles.

Contribution

It provides a clear physical distinction of deconfined critical points using simple models and observables, contrasting with previous classifications.

Findings

Deconfined critical points have unique observable signatures.

Distinction from Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson critical points is precise.

Comparison with earlier proposals clarifies the classification.

Abstract

We describe characteristic physical properties of the recently introduced class of deconfined quantum critical points. Using some simple models, we highlight observables which clearly distinguish such critical points from those described by the conventional Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson framework: such a distinction can be made quite precisely even though both classes of critical points are strongly coupled, and neither has sharp quasiparticle excitations. We also contrast our classification from proposals by Bernevig et al. (cond-mat/0004291) and Yoshioka et al. (cond-mat/0404427).