Spectroscopy of Matter Near Criticality

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We propose that the finite-frequency susceptibility of matter near a class of zero-temperature phase transition exhibits distinctive excitonic structure similar to meson resonances. The specific case of a Landau level undergoing a transition to antiferromagnetism is considered as a prototype. A physical analogy is drawn between the behavior calculated for such systems by epsilon-expansion techniques and the behavior of 1-dimensional spin chains calculated by exact diagonalization. It is proposed that the correct low-energy description of such critical points is a relativistic gauge theory in spin-fractionalized coordinates, and conversely that the application of gauge theories to solids amounts to perturbation theory about critical points.