Parity Anomaly of Lattice Maxwell Fermions in Two Spatial Dimensions

Abstract

Unconventional lattice fermions with high degeneracies beyond Weyl and Dirac fermions have attracted intensive attention in recent years. In this paper, attention is drawn to the pseudospin-1 Maxwell fermions and the $(2+1)$ dimensional parity anomaly, which goes beyond the scope of "fermion doubling theorem". We have derived the Hall conductivity of a single Maxwell fermion, and showcased each Maxwell fermion contributes a quantized Hall conductance $e^2/h$. We observe that the parity is spontaneously broken in the effective theory of lattice Maxwell fermions interacting with an (auxiliary) $U(1)$ gauge field, leading to an effective anomaly-induced Chern-Simons theory. An interesting observation from the parity anomaly is that the lattice Maxwell fermions beyond the "fermion doubling theorem", so there exists single Maxwell fermion in a lattice model. In addition, our work indicates the quantum anomaly in odd-dimensional spinor space.

8 pages,2 figures