Fractons in Twisted Multiflavor Schwinger Model

Abstract

We consider two-dimensional QED with several fermion flavors on a finite spatial circle. A modified version of the model with {\em flavor-dependent} boundary conditions $\psi_p(L) = e^{2\pi ip/ N} \psi_p(0)$, $p = 1, \ldots , N$ is discussed ($N $ is the number of flavors). In this case a non-contactable contour in the space of the gauge fields is {\em not} determined by large gauge transformations. The Euclidean path integral acquires the contribution from the gauge field configurations with fractional topological charge. The configuration with $\nu = 1/N$ is responsible for the formation of the fermion condensate $\langle\bar{\psi}_p \psi_p\rangle_0$. The condensate dies out as a power of $L^{-1}$ when the length $L$ of the spatial box is sent to infinity. Implications of this result for non-abelian gauge field theories are discussed in brief.