N=2 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills and the Quantum Hall Effect

TL;DR

This paper explores deep analogies between N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and the quantum Hall effect, revealing similar hierarchical structures, phase diagrams, and flow behaviors, with implications for understanding strong coupling dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a well-behaved analytic model for the scaling flow in N=2 SUSY Yang-Mills, clarifies the analogy with quantum Hall phenomena, and links Hall plateaux to strong coupling fixed points.

Findings

Modified the scaling flow to be well-behaved at all couplings.

Established a correspondence between Hall conductivity and the theta-parameter.

Identified odd denominator Hall plateaux with fixed points in SUSY Yang-Mills.

Abstract

It is argued that there are strong similarities between the infra-red physics of N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills and that of the quantum Hall effect, both systems exhibit a hierarchy of vacua with a sub-group of the modular group mapping between them. The scaling flow for pure SU(2) N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills in 4-dimensions is re-examined and an earlier suggestion in the literature, that was singular at strong coupling, is modified to a form that is well behaved at both weak and strong coupling and describes the crossover in an analytic fashion. Similarities between the phase diagram and the flow of SUSY Yang-Mills and that of the quantum Hall effect are then described, with the Hall conductivity in the latter playing the role of the theta-parameter in the former. Hall plateaux, with odd denominator filling fractions, are analogous to fixed points at strong coupling in N=2 SUSY Yang-Mills, where the massless degrees of freedom carry an odd monopole charge.