Corrections to scaling in the critical theory of deconfined criticality

Understand

Inspired by recent conflicting views on the order of the phase transition from an antiferromagnetic Neel state to a valence bond solid, we use the functional renormalization group to study the underlying quantum critical field theory which couples two complex matter fields to a non-compact gauge field.

• In our functional renormalization group approach we only expand in covariant derivatives of the fields and use a truncation in which the full field dependence of all wave-function renormalization functions is kept.
• While we do find critical exponents which agree well with some quantum Monte Carlo studies and support the scenario of deconfined criticality, we also obtain an irrelevant eigenvalue of small magnitude, leading to strong corrections to scaling and slow convergence in related numerical studies.