Emergence of supersymmetric quantum electrodynamics

Understand

Supersymmetric (SUSY) gauge theories such as the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model play a fundamental role in modern particle physics, but have not been verified so far in nature.

• Here, we show that a SUSY gauge theory with dynamical gauge bosons and fermionic gauginos emerges naturally at the pair-density-wave (PDW) quantum phase transition on the surface of a correlated topological insulator (TI) hosting three Dirac cones, such as the topological Kondo insulator SmB$_6$.
• At the quantum tricritical point between the surface Dirac semimetal and nematic PDW phases, three massless bosonic Cooper pair fields emerge as the superpartners of three massless surface Dirac fermions.
• The resulting low-energy effective theory is the supersymmetric XYZ model, which is dual by mirror symmetry to $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric quantum electrodynamics (SQED) in 2+1 dimensions, providing a first example of emergent supersymmetric gauge theory in condensed matter systems.