Phase structure of an Abelian two-Higgs model and high temperature superconductors

TL;DR

This paper explores the phase diagram of a 3D Abelian Higgs model with charged scalars, revealing phase transitions relevant to high-temperature superconductors and exotic quantum phases.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the phase structure and transitions in an Abelian Higgs model with implications for strongly correlated electron systems.

Findings

Identification of Fermi liquid, spin gap, superconductor, and strange metallic phases.

Discovery that at strong gauge coupling, certain phase transitions merge and become first order.

Prediction of the phase diagram in the three-dimensional coupling space.

Abstract

We study the phase structure of a three dimensional Abelian Higgs model with singly- and doubly-charged scalar fields coupled to a compact Abelian gauge field. The model is pretending to describe systems of strongly correlated electrons such as high-Tc superconductivity in overdoped regime and exotic phases supporting excitations with fractionalized quantum numbers. We identify the Fermi liquid, the spin gap, the superconductor and the strange metallic phases in which densities and properties of holon and spinon vortices and monopoles are explored. The phase diagram in the 3D coupling space is predicted. We show that at sufficiently strong gauge coupling the spinon-pair and holon condensation transitions merge together and become, unexpectedly, first order.