Renormalization group for 2D fermions with a flat Fermi surface

We investigate a competition of tendencies towards ferromagnetic and incommensurate order in two-dimensional fermionic systems within functional renormalization group technique using temperature as a scale parameter. We assume that the Fermi surface (FS) is substantially curved, lies in the vicinity of van Hove singularity points and perform an account of the self-energy corrections. It is shown that the character of magnetic fluctuations is strongly asymmetric with respect t...

The two-loop renormalization group (RG) calculation is considerably extended here for the two-dimensional (2D) fermionic effective field theory model, which includes only the so-called "hot spots" that are connected by the spin-density-wave (SDW) ordering wavevector on a Fermi surface generated by the 2D $t-t'$ Hubbard model at low hole doping. We compute the Callan-Symanzik RG equation up to two loops describing the flow of the single-particle Green's function, the correspon...

We present results on the effect of short-range, attractive interactions on the properties of balanced 2D Fermi gases in the non-superfluid (normal) phase. Our approach combines the renormalization group (RG) with perturbation theory, yielding observables such as the equation of state and compressibility. We find good agreement with recent experiments that measured the equation of state in trapped gases in the balanced regime, showing that these results are consistent with lo...

We analyze quantum fluctuation effects at the onset of charge or spin density wave order in two-dimensional metals with an incommensurate $2k_F$ wave vector connecting a single pair of hot spots on the Fermi surface. We compute the momentum and frequency dependence of the fermion self-energy near the hot spots to leading order in a fluctuation expansion (one loop). Non-Fermi liquid behavior with anomalous frequency scaling and a vanishing quasi particle weight is obtained. Th...

We analyze the effects of order parameter fluctuations on the ground state of fully gapped charge-neutral fermionic superfluids. The Goldstone mode associated with the spontaneously broken symmetry leads to a problem of coupled singularities in $d \leq 3$ dimensions. We derive a minimal set of one-loop renormalization group equations which fully captures the interplay of the singularities. The flow equations are based on a symmetry conserving truncation of a scale dependent e...

Using functional renormalization group methods, we study an effective low-energy model describing the Ising-nematic quantum critical point in two-dimensional metals. We treat both gapless fermionic and bosonic degrees of freedom on equal footing and explicitly calculate the momentum and frequency dependent effective interaction between the fermions mediated by the bosonic fluctuations. Following earlier work by S.-S. Lee for a one-patch model, Metlitski and Sachdev [Phys. Rev...

In this thesis, we perform a comprehensive renormalization group analysis of two- and three-dimensional Fermi systems at low and zero temperature. We examine systems with spontaneous symmetry-breaking and quantum critical behavior by deriving and solving flow equations within the functional renormalization group framework. We extend the Hertz-Millis theory of quantum phase transitions in itinerant fermion systems to phases with discrete and continuous symmetry-breaking, and t...

We analyze quantum fluctuation effects at the onset of charge or spin density wave order in two-dimensional metals with an incommensurate nesting ($2k_F$) wave vector connecting two pairs of hot spots on the Fermi surface. We first compute the momentum and frequency dependence of the fermion self-energy near the hot spots to leading order in a perturbation expansion (one loop). Non-Fermi liquid behavior with a linear (in energy) quasi-particle decay rate and a logarithmically...

We consider serious conceptual problems with the application of standard perturbation theory, in its zero temperature version, to the computation of the dressed Fermi surface for an interacting electronic system. In order to overcome these difficulties, we set up a variational approach which is shown to be equivalent to the renormalized perturbation theory where the dressed Fermi surface is fixed by recursively computed counterterms. The physical picture that emerges is that ...

We develop a finite temperature mean field theory in the path integral picture for an extremely dilute system of interacting Fermions in a plane. In the limit of short ranged interactions, the system is shown to undergo a phase transition to a superconducting regime. Unlike the well known BCS transition for metals, this phase transition is found to be very sensitive to the two dimensional nature of the problem. A quantitative estimate of this sensitivity is carried out by rep...