The phase transition of the Marcu-Fredenhagen ratio in the abelian lattice Higgs model

Abstract: The Marcu-Fredenhagen ratio is a quantity used in the physics literature to differentiate between phases in lattice Higgs models. It is defined as the limit of a ratio of expectations of Wilson line observables as the length of these lines go to infinity while the parameters of the model are kept fixed. In this paper, we show that the Marcu-Fredenhagen ratio exists in all predicted phases of the model, and show that it indeed undergoes a phase transition. In the Higgs phase of the model we do a more careful analysis of the ratio to deduce its first order behaviour and also give an upper bound on its rate of convergence. Finally, we also present a short and concise proof of the exponential decay of correlations in the Higgs phase.