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arXiv:1202.5946 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Nonperturbative renormalization group approach to Lifshitz critical behaviour

Karim Essafi, J.-P. Kownacki, D. Mouhanna

Published Jun 1, 2012• 16 citations
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Abstract

The behaviour of a d -dimensional vectorial N =3 model at a m -axial Lifshitz critical point is investigated by means of a nonperturbative renormalization group approach that is free of the huge technical difficulties that plague the perturbative approaches and limit their computations to the lowest orders. In particular being systematically improvable, our approach allows us to control the convergence of successive approximations and thus to get reliable physical quantities in d =3.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/98/51002

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The behaviour of a d -dimensional vectorial N =3 model at a m -axial Lifshitz critical point is investigated by means of a nonperturbative renormalization group approach that is free of the huge technical difficulties that plague the perturbative approaches and limit their computations to the lowest orders. In particular being systematically improvable, our approach allows us to control the convergence of successive approximations and thus to get reliable physical quantities in d =3.
An introduction to the theory of critical behavior at Lifshitz points is given, and the recent progress made in applying the field-theoretic renormalization group (RG) approach to ϕ4ϕ^4ϕ4 nnn-vector models representing universality classes of mmm-axial Lifshitz points is surveyed. The origins of the difficulties that had hindered a full two-loop RG analysis near the upper critical dimension for more than 20 years and produced long-standing contradictory εεε-expansion results are discussed. It is outlined how to cope with them. The pivotal role the considered class of continuum models might play in a systematic investigation of anisotropic scale invariance within the context of thermal equilibrium systems is emphasized. This could shed light on the question of whether anisotropic scale invariance implies an even larger invariance, as recently claimed in the literature.
Field-theoretic renormalization-group methods are developed to describe in a unified fashion the critical exponents of an m-fold Lifshitz point at the two-loop order in the anisotropic $(m\ensuremath{\ne}d)$ and isotropic (m=d(m=d(m=d close to 8) situations. The general theory is illustrated for the N-vector ${\ensuremath{\varphi}}^{4}$ model describing a d-dimensional system. A new regularization and renormalization procedure is presented for both types of Lifshitz behavior. The anisotropic cases are formulated with two independent renormalization-group transformations. The description of the isotropic behavior requires only one type of renormalization-group transformation. We point out the conceptual advantages implicit in this picture and show how this framework is related to other previous renormalization-group treatments for the Lifshitz problem. The Feynman diagrams of arbitrary loop order can be performed analytically provided these integrals are considered to be homogeneous functions of the external momenta scales. The anisotropic universality class (N,d,m)(N,d,m)(N,d,m) reduces easily to the Ising-like (N,d)(N,d)(N,d) when m=0.m=0.m=0. We show that the isotropic universality class (N,m)(N,m)(N,m) when m is close to 8 cannot be obtained from the anisotropic one in the limit $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{d}m$ near 8. The exponents for the uniaxial case d=3,N=m=1d=3,N=m=1d=3,N=m=1 are in good agreement with recent Monte Carlo simulations for the axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising model.
A renormalization-group scheme is developed for the three-dimensional O(2N)O(2N)O(2N)-symmetric Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson model, which is consistent with the use of a 1/N1/N1/N expansion as a systematic method of approximation. It is motivated by an application to the critical properties of superconductors, reported in a separate paper. Within this scheme, the infrared stable fixed point controlling critical behavior appears at z=0,z=0,z=0, where $z={\ensuremath{\lambda}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ is the inverse of the quartic coupling constant, and an efficient renormalization procedure consists of the minimal subtraction of ultraviolet divergences at z=0.z=0.z=0. This scheme is implemented at next-to-leading order, and the standard results for critical exponents calculated by other means are recovered. An apparently novel result of this nonperturbative method of approximation is that corrections to scaling (or confluent singularities) do not, as in perturbative analyses, appear as simple power series in the variable ${y=zt}^{\ensuremath{\omega}\ensuremath{\nu}}.$ At least in three dimensions, the power series are modified by powers of lny.\mathrm{ln}y.lny.
We comment on a recent letter by de Albuquerque and Leite ( 2001 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 34 L327 ), in which results to the second order in = 4 − d + m /2 were presented for the critical exponents ν L2 , η L2 and γ L2 of d -dimensional systems at m -axial Lifshitz points. We point out that their results are at variance with ours. The discrepancy is due to their incorrect computation of momentum-space integrals. Their speculation that the field-theoretic renormalization group approach, if performed in position space, might give results different from when it is performed in momentum space is refuted.
We propose an implementation of the nonperturbative renormalization group (NPRG) which applies to lattice models. Contrary to the usual NPRG approach where the initial condition of the RG flow is the mean-field solution, the lattice NPRG uses the (local) limit of decoupled sites as the (initial) reference system. In the long-distance limit, it is equivalent to the usual NPRG formulation and therefore yields identical results for the critical properties. We discuss both a lattice field theory defined on a d-dimensional hypercubic lattice and classical spin models. The simplest approximation, the local potential approximation, is sufficient to obtain the critical temperature and the magnetization of the three-dimensional Ising, XY, and Heisenberg models to an accuracy on the order of 1%. We show how the local potential approximation can be improved to include a nonzero anomalous dimension η and discuss the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition of the two-dimensional XY model on a square lattice.
We employ the derivative expansion of the nonperturbative renormalization group to address the phenomenon of anisotropic scale invariance and the associated functional fixed points, also known as Lifshitz points, in systems characterized by a scalar order parameter. We demonstrate the existence of the Lifshitz fixed point featuring a nonclassical value of the anisotropy exponent θ<1/2 and provide estimates for values of a set of critical exponents in the physically most relevant case of the three-dimensional uniaxial Lifshitz point (d,m)=(3,1), m denoting the anisotropy index. We compare our predictions with existing estimates from perturbative expansions around dimensionality d=4+1/2 as well as those from the 1/N expansion.