FEYNMAN PATH-INTEGRAL APPROACH TO THE QED3 THEORY OF THE PSEUDOGAP

In this work the connection between vortex condensation in a d-wave superconductor and the QED3 gauge theory of the pseudogap is elucidated. The approach taken circumvents the use of the standard Franz–Tesanovic gauge transformation, borrowing ideas from the path-integral analysis of the Aharonov–Bohm problem. An essential feature of this approach is that gauge transformations which are prohibited on a particular multiply-connected manifold (e.g. a superconductor with vortices) can be successfully performed on the universal covering space associated with that manifold.