David F. Mross

Cooper pairing in non-Fermi liquids

States of matter with a sharp Fermi-surface but no well-defined Landau quasiparticles arise in a number of physical systems. Examples include: (i) quantum critical points associated with the onset of order in metals;(ii) spinon Fermi-surface (U(1) spin-liquid) state of a Mott insulator; (iii) Halperin-Lee-Read composite fermion charge liquid state of a half-filled Landau level. In this work, we use renormalization group techniques to investigate possible instabilities of such non-Fermi-liquids in two spatial dimensions to Cooper pairing. We consider the Ising-nematic quantum critical point as an example of a phase transition in a metal, and demonstrate that the attractive interaction mediated by the order parameter fluctuations always leads to a superconducting instability. Moreover, in the regime where our calculation is controlled, superconductivity preempts the destruction of electronic quasiparticles. On the other hand, the spinon Fermi-surface and the Halperin-Lee-Read states are stable against Cooper pairing for a sufficiently weak attractive short-range interaction; however, once the strength of attraction exceeds a critical value, pairing sets in. We describe the ensuing quantum phase transition between (i) U(1) and Z2 spin-liquid states; (ii) Halperin-Lee-Read and Moore-Read states.

Explicit derivation of duality between a free Dirac cone and quantum electrodynamics in (2+1) dimensions

We explicitly derive the duality between a free electronic Dirac cone and quantum electrodynamics in (2+1) dimensions (QED_{3}) with N=1 fermion flavors. The duality proceeds via an exact, nonlocal mapping from electrons to dual fermions with long-range interactions encoded by an emergent gauge field. This mapping allows us to construct parent Hamiltonians for exotic topological-insulator surface phases, derive the particle-hole-symmetric field theory of a half-filled Landau level, and nontrivially constrain QED_{3} scaling dimensions. We similarly establish duality between bosonic topological insulator surfaces and N=2 QED_{3}.

Symmetry and duality in bosonization of two-dimensional Dirac fermions

Recent work on a family of boson-fermion mappings has emphasized the interplay of symmetry and duality: Phases related by a particle-vortex duality of bosons (fermions) are related by time-reversal symmetry in their fermionic (bosonic) formulation. We present exact mappings for a number of concrete models that make this property explicit on the operator level. We illustrate the approach with one- and two-dimensional quantum Ising models, and then similarly explore the duality web of complex bosons and Dirac fermions in (2+1) dimensions.

Anomalous Quasiparticle Symmetries and Non-Abelian Defects on Symmetrically Gapped Surfaces of Weak Topological Insulators.

We show that boundaries of 3D weak topological insulators can become gapped by strong interactions while preserving all symmetries, leading to Abelian surface topological order. The anomalous nature of weak topological insulator surfaces manifests itself in a nontrivial action of symmetries on the quasiparticles; most strikingly, translations change the anyon types in a manner impossible in strictly 2D systems with the same symmetry. As a further consequence, screw dislocations form non-Abelian defects that trap Z_{4} parafermion zero modes.

Theory of a continuous stripe melting transition in a two-dimensional metal: a possible application to cuprate superconductors.

We construct a theory of continuous stripe melting quantum phase transitions in two-dimensional metals and the associated Fermi surface reconstruction. Such phase transitions are strongly coupled but yet theoretically tractable in situations where the stripe ordering is destroyed by proliferating doubled dislocations of the charge stripe order. The resulting non-Landau quantum critical point has strong stripe fluctuations which we show decouple dynamically from the Fermi surface even though static stripe ordering reconstructs the Fermi surface. We discuss connections to various stripe phenomena in the cuprates. We point out several puzzling aspects of old experimental results [G. Aeppli et al., Science 278, 1432 (1997)] on singular stripe fluctuations in the cuprates, and provide a possible explanation within our theory. These results may thus have been the first observation of non-Landau quantum criticality in an experiment.