SHearth - Confinement Transitions in Compact U(1) Lattice Gauge Theories

Compact QED is a standard example of a gauge theory formulated on a lattice. For the last 50 years, it has been a reference model in nearly every textbook on the subject. It also emerges naturally as an effective theory describing the interactions and excitations in frustrated quantum magnets. These theories have two regimes corresponding to the confinement or deconfinement of electric charges. Despite decades of interest, relatively little is known about the nature of the confinement phase transition. In this talk we use a dual integer representation of the theory to develop new intuition about an old problem, bring decades of Moore's law to bear, and address some of the open questions still plaguing this canonical model.