Effective action of magnetic monopole in three-dimensional electrodynamics with massless matter and gauge theories of superconductivity

Abstract

We compute one-loop effective action of magnetic monopole in three-dimensional electrodynamics of massless bosons and fermions and find that it contains an infrared logarithm. So, when the number of massless matter species is sufficiently large, monopoles are suppressed and in the weak coupling limit charged particles are unconfined. This result provides some support to gauge theories of high-temperature superconductors. It also provides a mechanism by which interlayer tunneling of excitations with one unit of the ordinary electric charge can be suppressed while that of a doubly charged object is allowed.