We present a functional renormalization group analysis of superconductivity in the ground state of the attractive Hubbard model on a square lattice. Spontaneous symmetry breaking is treated in a purely fermionic setting via anomalous propagators and anomalous effective interactions. In addition to the anomalous interactions arising already in the reduced BCS model, effective interactions with three incoming legs and one outgoing leg (and vice versa) occur. We accomplish their integration into the usual diagrammatic formalism by introducing a Nambu matrix for the effective interactions. From a random-phase approximation generalized through use of this matrix we conclude that the impact of the 3+1 effective interactions is limited, especially considering the effective interactions which are important for the determination of the order parameter. The exact hierarchy of flow equations for one-particle irreducible vertex functions is truncated on the two-particle level, with higher-order self-energy corrections included in a scheme proposed by Katanin (2004 Phys. Rev. B 70 115109). Using a parametrization of effective interactions by patches in momentum space, the flow equations can be integrated numerically to the lowest scales without encountering divergences. Momentum-shell as well as interaction-flow cutoff functions are used, including a small external field or a large external field and a counterterm, respectively. Both approaches produce momentum-resolved order parameter values directly from the microscopic model. The size of the superconducting gap is in reasonable agreement with expectations from other studies.
We present a functional renormalization group analysis of superconductivity in the ground state of the attractive Hubbard model on a square lattice. Spontaneous symmetry breaking is treated in a purely fermionic setting via anomalous propagators and anomalous effective interactions. In addition to the anomalous interactions arising already in the reduced BCS model, effective interactions with three incoming legs and one outgoing leg (and vice versa) occur. We accomplish their integration into the usual diagrammatic formalism by introducing a Nambu matrix for the effective interactions. From a random-phase approximation generalized through use of this matrix we conclude that the impact of the 3+1 effective interactions is limited, especially considering the effective interactions which are important for the determination of the order parameter. The exact hierarchy of flow equations for one-particle irreducible vertex functions is truncated on the two-particle level, with higher-order self-energy corrections included in a scheme proposed by Katanin (2004 Phys. Rev. B 70 115109). Using a parametrization of effective interactions by patches in momentum space, the flow equations can be integrated numerically to the lowest scales without encountering divergences. Momentum-shell as well as interaction-flow cutoff functions are used, including a small external field or a large external field and a counterterm, respectively. Both approaches produce momentum-resolved order parameter values directly from the microscopic model. The size of the superconducting gap is in reasonable agreement with expectations from other studies.
The fermionic functional renormalization group in the one-particle irreducible formulation is truncated following an idea by Katanin. In this truncation, mean-field models are solved exactly in the symmetric phase and also for broken symmetry if the flow is seeded with symmetry-broken initial conditions. The method is applied using the momentum-shell cutoff to a charge-density-wave mean-field model at zero and finite temperature in order to understand the flows it produces. A small external field is applied to provide the symmetry-broken starting point. Increasing it suppresses the maximum of the effective interaction in the flow while increasing the final result for the order parameter. The effect of temperature on the flow as well as on the impact of the external field is studied. By employing an interaction-flow cutoff instead of the momentum-shell cutoff, the introduction of an off-diagonal counterterm is made effective. Results at zero external field thus become attainable via the functional renormalization group despite the symmetry-broken starting point. The maximum of the effective interaction flow can be shifted to the end of the flow where the order parameter flow is saturated. Spontaneous first-order transitions and hysteresis effects, outside the scope of the momentum-shell procedure, can be studied. A resummation of perturbation theory is used to exactly solve a reduced model combining Cooper and forward scattering. Anomalous effective interactions, including ones with an odd number of incoming legs, and the Goldstone boson are discussed. The latter anomalous effective interactions are the focus of the following study of the attractive Hubbard model in two dimensions at zero temperature, where the resummation framework is used as an approximation. The anomalous effective interactions with an odd number of incoming legs are of small importance for qualitative aspects, but have an impact quantitatively. The latter is found to vary in strength. Both renormalization-group procedures are used to study the superconducting order in the attractive Hubbard model. Although neither one is exact in the Hubbard case, stable flows yielding approximations comparable to ones found in the recent literature are discovered in both cases. The momentum-shell flows of the order parameter as well as of the normal and anomalous effective interactions are analyzed. Anomalous effective interactions and collective modes are studied in particular. The interaction-flow approach is used to obtain results for the order parameter which are compared with results from previous studies in detail.
Despite its apparent simplicity, the two-dimensional Hubbard model for locally interacting fermions on a square lattice is widely considered as a promising approach for the understanding of Cooper pair formation in the quasi two-dimensional high-Tc cuprate materials. In the present work this model is investigated by means of the functional renormalization group, based on an exact flow equation for the effective average action. In addition to the fermionic degrees of freedom of the Hubbard Hamiltonian, bosonic fields are introduced which correspond to the different possible collective orders of the system, for example magnetism and superconductivity. The interactions between bosons and fermions are determined by means of the method of “rebosonization” (or “flowing bosonization”), which can be described as a continuous, scale-dependent Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation. This method allows an efficient parameterization of the momentumdependent effective two-particle interaction between fermions (four-point vertex), and it makes it possible to follow the flow of the running couplings into the regimes exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking, where bosonic fluctuations determine the types of order which are present on large length scales. Numerical results for the phase diagram are presented, which include the mutual influence of different, competing types of order.
We describe a Wick ordered functional renormalization group method for interacting Fermi systems, where the effective low-energy action is generated from the bare action of the microscopic model by a differential flow equation. We apply this renormalization group approach to a prototypical two-dimensional lattice electron system, the Hubbard model on a square lattice. The flow equation for the effective interactions is evaluated numerically on 1-loop level. The effective interactions diverge at a finite energy scale which is exponentially small for small bare interactions. To analyze the nature of the instabilities signaled by the diverging interactions, the flow of the singlet superconducting susceptibilities for various pairing symmetries and also charge and spin density susceptibilities are computed. This and similar RG calculations by others conclusively establish the existence of d-wave superconductivity in the Hubbard model.
We analyze the competition between antiferromagnetism and superconductivity in the two-dimensional Hubbard model by combining a functional renormalization group flow with a mean-field theory for spontaneous symmetry breaking. Effective interactions are computed by integrating out states above a scale ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{\mathrm{MF}}$ in one-loop approximation, which captures in particular the generation of an attraction in the d-wave Cooper channel from fluctuations in the particle-hole channel. These effective interactions are then used as an input for a mean-field treatment of the remaining low-energy states, with antiferromagnetism, singlet superconductivity, and triplet $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pairing as the possible order parameters. Antiferromagnetism and superconductivity suppress each other, leaving only a small region in parameter space where both orders can coexist with a sizable order parameter for each. Triplet $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pairing appears generically in the coexistence region, but its feedback on the other order parameters is very small.
We complement previous functional renormalization group (fRG) studies of the two-dimensional Hubbard model by mean-field calculations. The focus falls on Van Hove filling and the hopping amplitude ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}/t=0.341$. The fRG data suggest a quantum critical point (QCP) in this region and in its vicinity a singular fermionic self-energy $\mathrm{Im}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}(\ensuremath{\omega})/\ensuremath{\omega}\ensuremath{\sim}\ensuremath{-}{\left|\ensuremath{\omega}\right|}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ with $\ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.26$ [K-U. Giering and M. Salmhofer, Self-energy flows in the two-dimensional repulsive Hubbard model, Phys. Rev. B 86, 245122 (2012)]. Here we start a more detailed investigation of this QCP using a bosonic formulation for the effective action, where the bosons couple to the order parameter fields. To this end, we use the channel decomposition of the fermionic effective action developed in C. Husemann and M. Salmhofer, Efficient Parametrization of the Vertex Function, Omega-Scheme, and the (t, t')-Hubbard Model at Van Hove Filling, Phys. Rev. B 79, 195125 (2009), which allows us to perform Hubbard-Stratonovich transformations for all relevant order parameter fields at any given energy scale $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$. We stop the flow at a scale $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$ where the correlations of the order parameter field are already pronounced, but the flow is still regular, and derive the effective boson theory. It contains d-wave superconducting, magnetic, and density-density interactions. We analyze the resulting phase diagram in the mean-field approximation. We show that the singular fermionic self-energy suppresses gap formation both in the superconducting and magnetic channel already at the mean-field level, thus rounding a first-order transition (without self-energy) to a quantum phase transition (with self-energy). We give a simple effective model that shows the generality of this effect. In the two-dimensional Hubbard model, the effective density-density interaction is peaked at a nonzero frequency, so that solving the mean-field equations already involves a functional equation instead of simply a matrix equation (on a technical level, similar to incommensurate phases). Within a certain approximation, we show that such an interaction leads to a short quasiparticle lifetime.
We study the phase diagram of the Hubbard model in the limit where U, the onsite repulsive interaction, is much smaller than the bandwidth. We present an asymptotically exact expression for Tc, the superconducting transition temperature, in terms of the correlation functions of the noninteracting system which is valid for arbitrary densities so long as the interactions are sufficiently small. Our strategy for computing Tc involves first integrating out all degrees of freedom having energy higher than an unphysical initial cutoff ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{0}$. Then, the renormalization group (RG) flows of the resulting effective action are computed and Tc is obtained by determining the scale below which the RG flows in the Cooper channel diverge. We prove that Tc is independent of ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{0}$. Using this method, we find a variety of unconventional superconducting ground states in two- and three-dimensional lattice systems, and present explicit results for Tc and pairing symmetries as a function of the electron concentration.