Entropy Best Presentation Award at the International ICTP School "Complex Quantum Systems Out of Equilibrium in Many-Body Physics and Beyond"

We are pleased to announce the winner of the best presentation award that Entropy sponsored at the International ICTP School “Complex Quantum Systems Out of Equilibrium in Many-Body Physics and Beyond” in 27–31 May 2019, Yerevan, Armenia.

"The Large Nf Limit of 3D QEDs and Complex Fixed Points" by Hrachya Khachatryan
Quantum Electro-Dynamics (QED) in 2+1 dimensions is a paradigmatic example of a Quantum Field Theory with a strongly coupled infrared behaviour. We study QEDs with an even number Nf of bosonic or fermionic flavors, allowing for interactions respecting at least U(Nf/2)^2 global symmetry. Using large Nf techniques, we argue that in both the bosonic and in fermionic cases, there are four interacting fixed points: two with U(Nf/2)^2 symmetry, and two with U(Nf) symmetry. NLO corrections in 1/Nf suggest that upon lowering the number of flavors all these fixed points merge and annihilate pairwise into the complex plane or exchange their stability properties. The relevance of our studies to the phenomenon of chiral symmetry breaking is discussed.