Conformal QED in two-dimensional topological insulators

It has been shown that local four-fermion interactions on the edges of two-dimensional time-reversal-invariant topological insulators give rise to a new non-Fermi-liquid phase, called helical Luttinger liquid (HLL). Here, we provide a first-principle derivation of this HLL based on the gauge-theory approach. We start by considering massless Dirac fermions confined on the one-dimensional boundary of the topological insulator and interacting through a three-dimensional quantum dynamical electromagnetic field. Within these assumptions, through a dimensional-reduction procedure, we derive the effective 1 + 1-dimensional interacting fermionic theory and reveal its underlying gauge theory. In the low-energy regime, the gauge theory that describes the edge states is given by a conformal quantum electrodynamics (CQED), which can be mapped exactly into a HLL with a Luttinger parameter and a renormalized Fermi velocity that depend on the value of the fine-structure constant alpha.