Nonperturbative effects of Topological Theta-term

Abstract

We study the effects of a topological Theta-term on 2+1 dimensional principal chiral models (PCM), which are nonlinear sigma models defined on Lie group manifolds. We find that when Theta = pi, the nature of the disordered phase of the principal chiral model is strongly affected by the topological term: it is either a gapless conformal field theory, or it is gapped and two-fold degenerate. The result of our paper can be used to analyze the boundary states of three dimensional symmetry protected topological phases.