Universality and the magnetic catalysis of chiral symmetry breaking

TL;DR

This paper investigates how strong magnetic fields universally induce chiral symmetry breaking in fermionic systems, even with minimal attractive interactions, through the magnetic catalysis effect.

Contribution

It demonstrates that in models with short-range interactions, large magnetic fields can cause chiral symmetry breaking with arbitrarily small attractive interactions.

Findings

Magnetic catalysis occurs universally at high magnetic fields.

Even infinitesimal attractive interactions can induce symmetry breaking.

Chiral symmetry breaking is driven by lowest Landau level interactions.

Abstract

The hypothesis that the magnetic catalysis of chiral symmetry breaking is due to interactions of massless fermions in their lowest Landau level is examined in the context of chirally symmetric models with short ranged interactions. It is argued that, when the magnetic field is sufficiently large, even an infinitesimal attractive interaction in the appropriate channel will break chiral symmetry.