A DYNAMICALLY GENERATED CHERN-SIMONS TERM IN QED3 WITH FERMION SELF COUPLING

The critical behavior of a strongly coupled three dimensional abelian gauge theory with N flavors and fermion self interactions is studied. Two independent four Fermi coupling constants G and H are considered, which can induce the breakdown of Z2 and parity symmetries, respectively. The solutions to the 1/N Schwinger-Dyson equations are used to determine the critical exponents, together with the effective potential for the two composite, scalar and pseudoscalar, dynamical degrees of freedom. Analyzing the scaling behavior of the theory, we determine the region in coupling constant space in which a Chern-Simons term for the abelian gauge field at zero momentum is dynamically generated.