Deconfined criticality between an antiferromagnetic insulator and a nodal d -wave superconductor: A quantum Monte Carlo study
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We present a quantum Monte Carlo study of the transition between the insulating Néel state and the nodal d -wave superconductor on the square lattice at half-filling. We access a regime of frustrated magnetic order without a sign problem using a parton representation of the electron in terms of fermionic spinons and bosonic chargons. Both partons move in a background π -flux (so the electron experiences no net flux) and are coupled to a quantum fluctuating SU(2) lattice gauge field. In contrast to earlier studies directly on the electronic degrees of freedom, we find evidence for a second-order deconfined quantum phase transition at which both the Néel and d -wave superconductivity orders vanish continuously. We compute correlators of the spinon-chargon composite with the same quantum numbers as the electron: we find a gapless Dirac dispersion inside the d -wave superconductor, turning into a gapped dispersion in the antiferromagnet.
Authors: Chuang Chen, Subir Sachdev, Zi Yang Meng
Institutions: University of Hong Kong, Harvard University, Flatiron Institute
Language: English
Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7167047531