Variational Monte Carlo Study of Symmetric Mass Generation in a Bilayer Honeycomb Lattice Model

Abstract: We investigate a bilayer honeycomb lattice model of spin-1/2 fermions at half-filling with local Heisenberg coupling of fermion spins across the two layers. Using variational Monte Carlo (VMC) simulation, we demonstrate that the system undergoes a direct transition from a Dirac semimetal phase to a symmetric gapped phase, known as symmetric mass generation (SMG), as the Heisenberg coupling strength is increased. The transition does not involve spontaneous symmetry breaking or topological order and has been proposed as an example of the fermionic deconfined quantum critical point (fDQCP). Our simulation shows that a fermionic parton bilinear mass opens at the transition point while all symmetries are still preserved thanks to the quantum fluctuations introduced by the correlation factor in the variational wave function. From the simulation data, we extract the critical exponent $\nu=0.96\pm0.03$ and the fermion scaling dimension $\Delta_c=1.31\pm0.04$ at the SMG critical point, which are consistent with the field theoretical prediction of fDQCP in (2+1)D. These findings support the hypothesis that the fermion fractionalizes at the SMG critical point.