Fractional electric charge of a magnetic vortex at nonzero temperature Original Research Article

An ideal gas of two-dimensional Dirac fermions in the background of a pointlike magnetic vortex with arbitrary flux is considered. We find that this system acquires fractional electric charge at finite temperatures and determine the functional dependence of the thermal average and quadratic fluctuation of the charge on the temperature, the vortex flux, and the continuous parameter of the boundary condition at the location of the vortex.