Emergent gauge flux in QED$_3$ with flavor chemical potential: application to magnetized U(1) Dirac spin liquids

We design a lattice model of non-compact U(1) gauge field coupled to fermions with a flavor chemical potential and solve it with large-scale determinant quantum Monte Carlo simulations. For zero flavor chemical potential, the model realizes three-dimensional quantum electrodynamics (QED$_3$) which has been argued to describe the ground state and low-energy excitations of the Dirac spin liquid phase of quantum antiferromagnets. At finite flavor chemical potential, corresponding to a Zeeman field perturbing the Dirac spin liquid, we find a ''chiral flux'' phase which is characterized by the generation of a finite mean emergent gauge flux and, accordingly, the formation of relativistic Landau levels for the Dirac fermions. In this state, the U(1)$_m$ magnetic symmetry is spontaneously broken, leading to a gapless free photon mode which, due to spin-flux-attachment, is observable in the longitudinal spin structure factor. We numerically compute longitudinal and transverse spin structure factors which match our continuum and lattice mean-field theory predictions. Further, sufficiently strong fluctuations of the emergent gauge field give rise to an antiferromagnetically ordered state with gapped Dirac fermions coexisting with a deconfined gauge field. We also find an interesting intermediate phase where the chiral flux phase and the antiferromagnetic phase coexist. We argue that our results pave the way to testable predictions for magnetized Dirac spin liquids in frustrated quantum antiferromagnets.