Transition In The Spectral Gap Of The Massless Overlap Dirac Operator Coupled To Abelian Fields In Three Dimensions

The low-lying spectrum of the massless overlap Dirac operator coupled to Abelian fields in three dimensions with three different measures are shown to exhibit two phases: a strong coupling gapped phase and a weak coupling gapless phase. The vanishing of the gap from the strong coupling side with a Maxwell and a conformal measure is governed by a Gaussian exponent. Contrary to this result, the vanishing of the gap from the strong coupling side with a compact Thirring measure is not consistent with a Gaussian exponent. The low-lying spectrum with a noncompact Thirring measure does not exhibit a simple nonmonotonic behavior as a function of the lattice size on the weak coupling side. Our combined analysis suggests exploring the possibility of a strongly coupled continuum theory starting from a compact lattice Thirring model where a compact U(1) gauge field with a single link action is coupled to even number of flavors of massless overlap Dirac fermions.