Breakdown of the Landau-Fermi liquid in Two Dimensions due to Umklapp Scattering

Because Fermi liquids are inherently non-interacting states of matter, all electronic levels below the chemical potential are doubly occupied. Consequently, the simplest way of breaking Fermi liquid theory is to engineer a model in which some of those states are singly occupied keeping time-reversal invariance intact. We show that breaking an overlooked local-in-momentum space $\mathbb Z_2$ symmetry of a Fermi liquid does precisely this. As a result, while the Mott transition...

We give a Hamiltonian based interpretation of microscopic Fermi liquid theory within a renormalization group framework. We identify the fixed point Hamiltonian of Fermi liquid theory, with the leading order corrections, and show that this Hamiltonian in mean field theory gives the Landau phenomenological theory. A renormalized perturbation theory is developed for calculations beyond the Fermi liquid regime. We also briefly discuss the breakdown of Fermi liquid theory as it oc...

In this thesis, I study a two-dimensional extended Hubbard model in the weak coupling limit. Quite generally, the electron gas is unstable towards a superconducting state even in the absence of phonons. However in the special case of a half-filled band, the Fermi surface is nested and the system is at a Van Hove singularity. In this situation, there are six competing instabilities: $s$- and d-wave superconductivity, spin-and charge-density waves and two phases with circulatin...

We employ the functional renormalization group to investigate the phase diagram of the $t-t'$ Hubbard model on the square lattice with finite chemical potential $\mu$ at zero temperature. A unified scheme to derive flow equations in the symmetric and symmetry broken regimes allows a consistent continuation of the renormalization flow in the symmetry broken regimes. At the transition from the symmetric regime to the symmetry broken regimes, our calculation reveals leading inst...

We present a renormalization group analysis of two-dimensional interacting fermion systems with a closed and partially flat Fermi surface. Numerical solutions of the one-loop flow equations show that for a bare local repulsion, the system evolves through three different regimes as the typical energy is lowered: a high-energy transient with a strong competition between particle-particle and particle-hole channels, an intermediate regime with dominant spin density wave correlat...

We apply a renormalization group approach to the determination of the phase diagram of the t-t' Hubbard model at the Van Hove filling, as function of t'/t, for small values of U/t. The model presents ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic and d-wave superconducting phases. Antiferromagnetism and d-wave superconductivity arise from the same interactions, and compete in the same region of parameter space.

The effect of strong anisotropy on the Fermi line of a system of correlated electrons is studied in two space dimensions, using renormalization group techniques. Inflection points change the scaling exponents of the couplings, enhancing the instabilities of the system. They increase the critical dimension for non Fermi liquid behavior, from 1 to 3/2. Assuming that, in the absence of nesting, the dominant instability is towards a superconducting ground state, simple rules to d...

The instabilities induced on a two-dimensional system of correlated electrons by the anisotropies of its Fermi line are analyzed on general grounds. Simple scaling arguments allow to predict the opening of a superconducting gap with a well-defined symmetry prescribed by the geometry of the Fermi line. The same arguments predict a critical dimension of 3/2 for the transition of the two-dimensional system to non-Fermi liquid behavior. The methods are applied to the t-t' Hubbard...

An effective Hamiltonian for the Kohn-Luttinger superconductor is constructed and solved in the BCS approximation. The method is applied to the t-t' Hubbard model in two dimensions with the following results: (i) The superconducting phase diagram at half filling is shown to provide a weak-coupling analog of the recently proposed spin liquid state in the J_1-J_2 Heisenberg model. (ii) In the parameter region relevant for the cuprates we have found a nontrivial energy dependenc...

This thesis is concerned with ground state properties of two-dimensional fermionic superfluids, in which fluctuation effects like the renormalization of the order parameter or infrared singularities are important. In the superfluid state, the fermionic two-particle vertex develops rich and singular dependences on momentum and frequency, for which an efficient parametrization in terms of boson-exchange interactions in the particle-hole and particle-particle channels is formula...