Realizing supersymmetry in condensed matter systems

Abstract

Supersymmetry (SUSY) has not been verified so far as a fundamental symmetry in particle physics. Emergent phenomena in condensed matter physics bring the possibility of realizing SUSY as an IR symmetry. We show that 2+1D N=2 Nf=2 supersymmetric quantum electrodynamics (SQED3) with dynamical gauge bosons and fermionic gauginos emerges naturally at the tricritical point of nematic pair-density-wave (PDW) quantum phase transition on the surface of a correlated topological insulator hosting three Dirac cones, such as the topological Kondo insulator SmB6. It provides a first example of emergent supersymmetric gauge theory in condensed matter systems. We also investigate the possibility of emergent 3+1D SUSY theory in lattice models. By constructing an explicit fermionic lattice model featuring two 3D Weyl nodes, we find a continuous PDW quantum phase transition as a function of attractive Hubbard interaction. We further show that N=1 3+1D SUSY emerges at the PDW transition, which we believe is the first realization of emergent 3+1D space-time SUSY in microscopic lattice models. Supersymmetry allows us to determine certain critical exponents and the optical conductivity at the strongly coupled fixed point exactly, which may be measured in future experiments.