Anomalous superfluidity in 2+1 dimensional two-color lattice QCD

Abstract

We study thermodynamics of strongly coupled lattice QCD with $two$ colors of staggered fermions in $(2+1)$ dimensions. The partition function of this model can be written elegantly as a statistical mechanics of dimers and baryonloops. The model is invariant under an $SO(3)\times U(1)$ symmetry. At low temperatures we find evidence for superfluidity in the U(1) symmetry sector while the SO(3) symmetry remains unbroken. The finite temperature phase transition appears to belong to the Kosterlitz-Thouless universality class, but the superfluid density jump $\rho_s(T_c)$ at the critical temperature $T_c$ is anomalously higher than the normal value of $2 T_c/\pi$. We show that by adding a small SO(3) symmetry breaking term to the model, the superfluid density jump returns to its normal value implying that the extra symmetry causes anomalous superfluid behavior. Our results may be of interest to researchers studying superfluidity in spin-1 systems.