Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Minimal-doubling and single-Weyl fermion Hamiltonians

Tatsuhiro Misumi*

  • *Contact author: misumi@phys.kindai.ac.jp

Phys. Rev. D 113, 074521 – Published 28 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jdy1-qw2s

Abstract

We develop a systematic Hamiltonian formulation of minimally doubled lattice fermions in (3+1) dimensions, derive their nodal structures (structures of zeros), and classify their symmetry patterns for both four-component Dirac and two-component Weyl constructions. Motivated by recent single-Weyl proposals based on Bogoliubov-de Gennes representation, we argue that the corresponding single-Weyl Hamiltonians are obtained from the minimal-doubling Hamiltonians supplemented by an appropriate species-splitting mass term, and we reexamine the non-on-site symmetry protecting the physical Weyl node in terms of a Ginsparg-Wilson-type relation. We then construct a one-parameter family of deformations that preserves all the symmetries and demonstrate that, once the parameter exceeds a critical value, additional Weyl nodes emerge and the system exits the single-node regime. This indicates that in interacting theories radiative corrections can generate symmetry-allowed counterterms, so maintaining the desired single-Weyl phase generically requires “moderate” parameter tuning.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (88)

  1. K. G. Wilson, Confinement of quarks, Phys. Rev. D 10, 2445 (1974).
  2. M. Creutz, Monte Carlo study of quantized SU(2) gauge theory, Phys. Rev. D 21, 2308 (1980).
  3. L. H. Karsten and J. Smit, Lattice fermions: Species doubling, chiral invariance, and the triangle anomaly, Nucl. Phys. B183, 103 (1981).
  4. H. B. Nielsen and M. Ninomiya, Absence of neutrinos on a lattice. 1. Proof by homotopy theory, Nucl. Phys. B185, 20 (1981).
  5. H. B. Nielsen and M. Ninomiya, Absence of neutrinos on a lattice. 2. Intuitive topological proof, Nucl. Phys. B193, 173 (1981).
  6. H. B. Nielsen and M. Ninomiya, No go theorem for regularizing chiral fermions, Phys. Lett. 105B, 219 (1981).
  7. K. G. Wilson, Quarks and strings on a lattice, in New Phenomena in Subnuclear Physics: Proceedings, International School of Subnuclear Physics, Erice, Sicily, 1975. Part A (1975), pp. 69–142, 10.1007/978-1-4613-4208-3-6.
  8. J. B. Kogut and L. Susskind, Hamiltonian formulation of Wilson’s lattice gauge theories, Phys. Rev. D 11, 395 (1975).
  9. L. Susskind, Lattice fermions, Phys. Rev. D 16, 3031 (1977).
  10. N. Kawamoto and J. Smit, Effective Lagrangian and dynamical symmetry breaking in strongly coupled lattice QCD, Nucl. Phys. B192, 100 (1981).
  11. H. S. Sharatchandra, H. J. Thun, and P. Weisz, Susskind fermions on a Euclidean lattice, Nucl. Phys. B192, 205 (1981).
  12. M. F. Golterman and J. Smit, Selfenergy and flavor interpretation of staggered fermions, Nucl. Phys. B245, 61 (1984).
  13. M. F. Golterman, Staggered mesons, Nucl. Phys. B273, 663 (1986).
  14. G. Kilcup and S. R. Sharpe, A tool kit for staggered fermions, Nucl. Phys. B283, 493 (1987).
  15. D. B. Kaplan, A method for simulating chiral fermions on the lattice, Phys. Lett. B 288, 342 (1992).
  16. Y. Shamir, Chiral fermions from lattice boundaries, Nucl. Phys. B406, 90 (1993).
  17. V. Furman and Y. Shamir, Axial symmetries in lattice QCD with Kaplan fermions, Nucl. Phys. B439, 54 (1995).
  18. H. Neuberger, More about exactly massless quarks on the lattice, Phys. Lett. B 427, 353 (1998).
  19. P. H. Ginsparg and K. G. Wilson, A remnant of chiral symmetry on the lattice, Phys. Rev. D 25, 2649 (1982).
  20. M. Luscher, Exact chiral symmetry on the lattice and the Ginsparg-Wilson relation, Phys. Lett. B 428, 342 (1998).
  21. W. Bietenholz and I. Hip, The scaling of exact and approximate Ginsparg-Wilson fermions, Nucl. Phys. B570, 423 (2000).
  22. M. Creutz, T. Kimura, and T. Misumi, Index theorem and overlap formalism with naive and minimally doubled fermions, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2010) 041.
  23. S. Dürr and G. Koutsou, Brillouin improvement for Wilson fermions, Phys. Rev. D 83, 114512 (2011).
  24. S. Dürr, G. Koutsou, and T. Lippert, Meson and baryon dispersion relations with brillouin fermions, Phys. Rev. D 86, 114514 (2012).
  25. T. Misumi, New fermion discretizations and their applications, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2012 (2012) 005 [arXiv:1211.6999].
  26. Y.-G. Cho, S. Hashimoto, J.-I. Noaki, A. Juttner, and M. Marinkovic, O(a2)-improved actions for heavy quarks and scaling studies on quenched lattices, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2013 (2014) 255 [arXiv:1312.4630].
  27. Y.-G. Cho, S. Hashimoto, A. Juttner, T. Kaneko, M. Marinkovic, J.-I. Noaki, and J. T. Tsang, Improved lattice fermion action for heavy quarks, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2015) 072.
  28. S. Dürr and G. Koutsou, On the suitability of the brillouin action as a kernel to the overlap procedure, arXiv:1701.00726.
  29. D. H. Adams, Theoretical foundation for the index theorem on the lattice with staggered fermions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 141602 (2010).
  30. D. H. Adams, Pairs of chiral quarks on the lattice from staggered fermions, Phys. Lett. B 699, 394 (2011).
  31. C. Hoelbling, Single flavor staggered fermions, Phys. Lett. B 696, 422 (2011).
  32. P. de Forcrand, A. Kurkela, and M. Panero, Numerical properties of staggered overlap fermions, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2010 (2010) 080 [arXiv:1102.1000].
  33. M. Creutz, T. Kimura, and T. Misumi, Aoki phases in the lattice Gross-Neveu model with flavored mass terms, Phys. Rev. D 83, 094506 (2011).
  34. T. Misumi, M. Creutz, T. Kimura, T. Z. Nakano, and A. Ohnishi, Aoki phases in staggered-Wilson fermions, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2011 (2011) 108 [arXiv:1110.1231].
  35. E. Follana, V. Azcoiti, G. Di Carlo, and A. Vaquero, Spectral flow and index theorem for staggered fermions, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2011 (2011) 100 [arXiv:1111.3502].
  36. P. de Forcrand, A. Kurkela, and M. Panero, Numerical properties of staggered quarks with a taste-dependent mass term, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2012) 142.
  37. T. Misumi, T. Z. Nakano, T. Kimura, and A. Ohnishi, Strong-coupling analysis of parity phase structure in staggered-wilson fermions, Phys. Rev. D 86, 034501 (2012).
  38. S. Dürr, Taste-split staggered actions: Eigenvalues, chiralities and symanzik improvement, Phys. Rev. D 87, 114501 (2013).
  39. C. Hoelbling and C. Zielinski, Spectral properties and chiral symmetry violations of (staggered) domain wall fermions in the Schwinger model, Phys. Rev. D 94, 014501 (2016).
  40. C. Zielinski, Theoretical and computational aspects of new lattice fermion formulations, Ph.D. thesis, Nanyang Technol. U., 2016, arXiv:1703.06364.
  41. T. Kimura, S. Komatsu, T. Misumi, T. Noumi, S. Torii, and S. Aoki, Revisiting symmetries of lattice fermions via spin-flavor representation, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2012) 048.
  42. A. Chowdhury, A. Harindranath, J. Maiti, and S. Mondal, Many avatars of the wilson fermion: A perturbative analysis, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2013) 037.
  43. T. Misumi and Y. Tanizaki, Lattice gauge theory for haldane conjecture and central-branch Wilson fermion, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2020, 033B03 (2020).
  44. T. Misumi and J. Yumoto, Varieties and properties of central-branch Wilson fermions, Phys. Rev. D 102, 034516 (2020).
  45. L. H. Karsten, Lattice fermions in Euclidean space-time, Phys. Lett. 104B, 315 (1981).
  46. F. Wilczek, On lattice fermions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 2397 (1987).
  47. M. Creutz, Four-dimensional graphene and chiral fermions, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2008) 017.
  48. A. Borici, Creutz fermions on an orthogonal lattice, Phys. Rev. D 78, 074504 (2008).
  49. P. F. Bedaque, M. I. Buchoff, B. C. Tiburzi, and A. Walker-Loud, Broken symmetries from minimally doubled fermions, Phys. Lett. B 662, 449 (2008).
  50. P. F. Bedaque, M. I. Buchoff, B. C. Tiburzi, and A. Walker-Loud, Search for fermion actions on hyperdiamond lattices, Phys. Rev. D 78, 017502 (2008).
  51. S. Capitani, J. Weber, and H. Wittig, Minimally doubled fermions at one loop, Phys. Lett. B 681, 105 (2009).
  52. T. Kimura and T. Misumi, Characters of lattice fermions based on the hyperdiamond lattice, Prog. Theor. Phys. 124, 415 (2010).
  53. T. Kimura and T. Misumi, Lattice fermions based on higher-dimensional hyperdiamond lattices, Prog. Theor. Phys. 123, 63 (2010).
  54. M. Creutz and T. Misumi, Classification of minimally doubled fermions, Phys. Rev. D 82, 074502 (2010).
  55. M. Creutz, Minimal doubling and point splitting, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2010 (2010) 078 [arXiv:1009.3154].
  56. S. Capitani, M. Creutz, J. Weber, and H. Wittig, Renormalization of minimally doubled fermions, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2010) 027.
  57. B. C. Tiburzi, Chiral lattice fermions, minimal doubling, and the axial anomaly, Phys. Rev. D 82, 034511 (2010).
  58. S. Kamata and H. Tanaka, Minimal doubling fermion and hermiticity, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2013, 023B05 (2013).
  59. T. Misumi, Phase structure for lattice fermions with flavored chemical potential terms, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2012) 068.
  60. T. Misumi, T. Kimura, and A. Ohnishi, QCD phase diagram with 2-flavor lattice fermion formulations, Phys. Rev. D 86, 094505 (2012).
  61. S. Capitani, Reducing the number of counterterms with new minimally doubled actions, Phys. Rev. D 89, 014501 (2014).
  62. S. Capitani, New chiral lattice actions of the Borici-Creutz type, Phys. Rev. D 89, 074508 (2014).
  63. T. Misumi, Fermion actions extracted from lattice super Yang-Mills theories, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2013) 063.
  64. J. H. Weber, S. Capitani, and H. Wittig, Numerical studies of minimally doubled fermions, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2013 (2014) 122 [arXiv:1312.0488].
  65. J. H. Weber, Properties of minimally doubled fermions. Ph.D. thesis, Mainz University, 2015, arXiv:1706.07104.
  66. S. Dürr and J. H. Weber, Dispersion relation and spectral range of Karsten-Wilczek and Borici-Creutz fermions, Phys. Rev. D 102, 014516 (2020).
  67. X. Wan, A. Turner, A. Vishwanath, and S. Y. Savrasov, Topological semimetal and Fermi-arc surface states in the electronic structure of pyrochlore iridates, Phys. Rev. B 83, 205101 (2011).
  68. L. Gioia and R. Thorngren, Exact chiral symmetries of 3+1  D Hamiltonian lattice fermions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 061601 (2026).
  69. M. Creutz, I. Horvath, and H. Neuberger, A new fermion Hamiltonian for lattice gauge theory, Nucl. Phys. B, Proc. Suppl. 106, 760 (2002).
  70. K. Fujikawa, Algebraic generalization of the Ginsparg-Wilson relation, Nucl. Phys. B589, 487 (2000).
  71. M. Clancy, Toward a Ginsparg-Wilson lattice Hamiltonian, Phys. Rev. D 110, L011502 (2024).
  72. M. Clancy, D. B. Kaplan, and H. Singh, Generalized Ginsparg-Wilson relations, Phys. Rev. D 109, 014502 (2024).
  73. L. Fidkowski and C. Xu, A No-Go result for implementing chiral symmetries by locality-preserving unitaries in a three-dimensional Hamiltonian lattice model of fermions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 196601 (2023).
  74. H. Singh, Ginsparg-Wilson Hamiltonians with improved chiral symmetry, arXiv:2505.20419.
  75. G. Meyniel and F. Zhou, Equivalent class of emergent single Weyl fermion in 3D topological states: gapless superconductors and superfluids vs chiral fermions, arXiv:2510.25959.
  76. A. Chatterjee, S. D. Pace, and S.-H. Shao, Quantized axial charge of staggered fermions and the chiral anomaly, Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021601 (2025).
  77. T. Onogi and T. Yamaoka, Non-singlet conserved charges and anomalies in 3+1  D staggered fermions, arXiv:2509.04906.
  78. S. Aoki, Y. Kikukawa, and T. Takemoto, Chiral anomaly of Kogut-Susskind fermion in (3+1)-dimensional Hamiltonian formalism, Phys. Rev. D 113, 034514 (2026).
  79. E. Eichten and J. Preskill, Chiral gauge theories on the lattice, Nucl. Phys. B268, 179 (1986).
  80. S. Sint, Lattice QCD with a chiral twist, in Perspectives in Lattice QCD (World Scientific, Singapore, 2007).
  81. A. Shindler, Twisted mass lattice QCD, Phys. Rep. 461, 37 (2008).
  82. K. Shukre and S. Basak, Symanzik effective action for Karsten-Wilczek minimally doubled fermions, Phys. Rev. D 112, 114501 (2025).
  83. J. H. Weber, Spin-taste representation of minimally doubled fermions from first principles: Karsten-Wilczek fermions, Phys. Rev. D 112, 014509 (2025).
  84. K. S. Shukre, D. Chakrabarti, and S. Basak, Chiral Lagrangian for Karsten-Wilczek minimally doubled fermion, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2024 (2025) 357 [arXiv:2411.14848].
  85. J. H. Weber, Spin-taste structure of minimally doubled fermions, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2023 (2024) 353 [arXiv:2312.08526].
  86. S. Borsányi, S. Capitani, Z. Fodor, D. Godzieba, P. Parotto, R. A. Vig, and C. H. Wong, Taste breaking in the minimally doubled Karsten-Wilczek action and its tree-level improvement, Phys. Rev. D 111, 074510 (2025).
  87. R. A. Vig, S. Borsanyi, Z. Fodor, D. Godzieba, P. Parotto, and C. H. Wong, First dynamical simulations with minimally doubled fermions, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2023 (2024) 289 [arXiv:2401.07651].
  88. S. Durr and S. Capitani, Taste-splittings of staggered, Karsten-Wilczek and Borici-Creutz fermions under gradient flow in 2D, Proc. Sci., LATTICE2024 (2025) 460 [arXiv:2411.18237].

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation