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Generalizing deconfined criticality to 3D N-flavor SU(2) quantum chromodynamics on the fuzzy sphere

Emilie Huffman1,*, Zheng Zhou (周正)2,3, Yin-Chen He2,4, and Johannes S. Hofmann5,†

  • *Contact author: ehuffman@wfu.edu
  • †Contact author: jhofmann@pks.mpg.de
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 034503 – Published 5 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/f6qg-q875

Abstract

The infrared behavior of gauge theories coupled to matter remains an open problem in quantum field theory. For a given gauge group, such theories are expected to flow to an interacting conformal fixed point over a range of fermion or scalar flavors, known as the “conformal window.” Their nature is important for understanding critical phases and phase transitions beyond the Landau paradigm like the deconfined quantum critical point yet remains challenging for conventional nonperturbative approaches. In this work, we study a family of fuzzy-sphere models corresponding to nonlinear sigma models with Sp(N) global symmetry extended to the strongly coupled region. These theories are expected have an infrared fixed point described by SU(2) quantum chromodynamics in three space-time dimensions with N flavors of fermions. They can be viewed as a generalization of the SO(5) deconfined quantum critical point, corresponding to N=2. We investigate them using quantum Monte Carlo for N up to 16. We find evidence that for N≥4 the phase diagram contains a critical phase that appears to be absent for N=2. Within this phase, we measure the two-point correlation function and the excitation spectrum, which exhibit emergent conformal symmetry. We also extract the scaling dimension Δϕ of a leading operator and find consistency with large-N expectations.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 034503– Published 5 August, 2026
  • Received 17 March 2026
  • Accepted 6 July 2026
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