Origin of artificial electrodynamics in three-dimensional bosonic models

Several simple models of strongly correlated bosons on three-dimensional lattices have been shown to possess exotic fractionalized Mott insulating phases with a gapless photon excitation. In this paper we show how to view the physics of this Coulomb state in terms of the excitations of proximate superfluid. We argue for the presence of ordered vortex cores with a broken discrete symmetry in the nearby superfluid phase and that proliferating these degenerate but distinct vortices with equal amplitudes produces the Coulomb phase. This provides a simple physical description of the origin of the exotic excitations of the Coulomb state. The physical picture is formalized by means of a dual description of three-dimensional bosonic systems in terms of fluctuating quantum mechanical vortex loops. Such a dual formulation is extensively developed. It is shown how the Coulomb phase (as well as various other familiar phases) of three-dimensional bosonic systems may be described in this vortex loop theory. For bosons at half-filling and the closely related system of spin-1/2 quantum magnets on a cubic lattice, fractionalized phases as well as bond- or box-ordered states are possible. The latter are analyzed by an extension of techniques previously developed in two spatial dimensions. The relation between these confining phases with broken translational symmetry and the fractionalized Coulomb phase is exposed.