Non-cancellation of the parity anomaly in the strong-field regime of QED$_{2+1}$

Understand

Quantum fluctuations lead to an anomalous violation of parity symmetry in quantum electrodynamics for an even number of spatial dimensions.

• While the leading parity-odd electric current vanishes in vacuum, we uncover a non-cancellation of the anomaly for strong electric fields with distinct macroscopic signatures.
• We perform real-time lattice simulations with fully dynamical gauge fields and Wilson fermions in $2+1$ space-time dimensions.
• In the static field limit, relevant at early times, we solve the problem analytically.