Screening Length in 2+1-dimensional Abelian Chern-Simons Theories

Abstract

In this paper, we systematically study the question of screening length in Abelian Chern-Simons theories. In the Abelian Higgs theory, where there are two massive poles in the gauge propagator at the tree level, we show that the coefficient of one of them becomes negligible at high temperature and that the screening length is dominantly determined by the parity violating part of the self-energy. In this theory, static magnetic fields are screened. In the fermion theory, on the other hand, the parity conserving part of the self-energy determines the screening length and static magnetic fields are not screened. Several other interesting features are also discussed.