High Energy Theory Seminar

There is an interesting duality in (2+1)d between theories of interacting bosons and U(1) gauge theories with bosonic charge, also known as charge-vortex duality. This duality is very useful for theoretically accessing various strongly interacting phases of matter, which I will briefly describe. More recently, a similar duality between Dirac fermion and quantum electrodynamics in (2+1)d has been proposed. I will explain the physics related to this duality. If time permits, I will also discuss two applications of this duality: (1) interacting surface state of topological insulator, and (2) the half-filled Landau level problem in quantum hall physics.