Adventures in Flatland: Quantum Criticality in the 2+1d Thirring Model

effective theories resembling QED in 2+1 dimensions,  proposed to describe layered electronic systems with linear dispersion such as graphene.

For a small number of flavors and sufficiently strong interactions the ground state may be disrupted by condensation of particle-hole pairs, 

rather like the breaking of chiral symmetry in QCD leading to the dynamical generation of most of the observed mass in the universe.

With  no small dimensionless parameters in play in this regime the Thirring model is plausibly the simplest theory of fermions requiring a numerical solution.

I will review what is currently known focussing on recent lattice field theory simulations employing Domain Wall Fermions, a formulation drawn from state-of-the-art QCD simulation, to faithfully capture the underlying symmetries of the strong dynamics at the critical point.