Quantum confinement transition in a d-wave superconductor - art. no. 134510

We study the nature of the zero-temperature phase transition between a d-wa ve superconductor and a Mott insulator in two dimensions. In this "quantum confinement transition," spin and charge are confined to form the electron in the Mott insulator. Within a dual formulation, direct transitions from d -wave superconductors at half-filling to insulators with spin-Peierls (as w ell as other) order emerge naturally. The possibility of striped supercondu ctors is also discussed within the dual formulation. The transition is desc ribed by nodal fermions and bosonic vortices, interacting via a long-ranged statistical interaction modeled by two coupled Chern-Simons gauge fields, and the critical properties of this model are discussed.