Studying $\textrm{QED}_3$ with radial quantization on the lattice -- I. Free limit

Abstract: To investigate the three-dimensional quantum electrodynamics in the radial quantization on the lattice, the lattice action is constructed and the free limit is studied on $S^2 \times \mathbb{R}$. With the overlap fermion, it is numerically verified that the important symmetries of the theory can be realized on the lattice. The analytic correlators are derived and compared to the lattice results, which agree including the overall normalization. The $O(a^2)$-scaling is confirmed toward the analytic value in the continuum limit, and the number of reproduced descendant states is estimated heuristically for the first few refinement levels. Our study helps us identify the features of the theory that we can study on the icosahedral lattice without fine-tuning.