Chiral symmetry breaking and phase fluctuations:: A QED3 theory of the pseudogap state in cuprate superconductors -: art. no. 180511

A d-wave superconductor, its phase coherence progressively destroyed by unbinding of vortex-antivortex pairs, suffers an instability related to chiral-symmetry breaking in QED(3). The chiral manifold exhibits large degeneracy spanned by physical states acting as inherent competitors of d-wave superconductivity. Two of these states are associated with antiferromagnetic insulator and stripe phases, known to be stable in the pseudogap regime of cuprates near half-filling. The theory also predicts an additional, yet unobserved state: a d+ip phase-incoherent superconductor.