We revisit the critical behavior of classical frustrated systems using the nonperturbative renormalization group (NPRG) equation. Our study is performed within the local potential approximation of this equation to which is added the flow of the field renormalization. Our flow equations are functional to avoid possible artifacts coming from field expansions which consists in keeping only a limited number of coupling constants. We present a simple numerical method to follow the fixed point solution of our equations by changing gradually the dimension d and the number N of spin-components. We explain in details the advantage of this method as well as the numerical difficulties we encounter, which become severe close to d = 2. The function N_c(d) separating the regions of first and second order in the (d,N) plane is computed for d between 4 and 2.2. Our results confirm what was previously found within cruder approximation of the NPRG equation and contradict both the fixed dimension perturbative approach and the results obtained within the conformal bootstrap approach.
We revisit the critical behavior of classical frustrated systems using the nonperturbative renormalization group (NPRG) equation. Our study is performed within the local potential approximation of this equation to which is added the flow of the field renormalization. Our flow equations are functional to avoid possible artifacts coming from field expansions which consists in keeping only a limited number of coupling constants. We present a simple numerical method to follow the fixed point solution of our equations by changing gradually the dimension d and the number N of spin-components. We explain in details the advantage of this method as well as the numerical difficulties we encounter, which become severe close to d = 2. The function N_c(d) separating the regions of first and second order in the (d,N) plane is computed for d between 4 and 2.2. Our results confirm what was previously found within cruder approximation of the NPRG equation and contradict both the fixed dimension perturbative approach and the results obtained within the conformal bootstrap approach.
Abstract We revisit the critical behavior of classical frustrated systems using the nonperturbative renormalization group (NPRG) equation. Our study is performed within the local potential approximation of this equation to which is added the flow of the field renormalization. Our flow equations are functional to avoid possible artifacts coming from the field expansion of the fixed point potential which consists in keeping only a limited number of coupling constants. We explain in detail our numerical implementation, its advantages and the difficulties encountered in the vicinity of d = 2. For N-component spins, the function N c ( d ) separating the regions of first and second order transitions in the (d, N) plane is computed for d between 4 and 2.3. Our results confirm what was previously found with cruder approximations of the NPRG equation and contradict both the fixed dimension perturbative approach and some of the results obtained within the conformal bootstrap approach.
This article is devoted to the study of the critical properties of classical XY and Heisenberg frustrated magnets in three dimensions. We first analyze the experimental and numerical situations. We show that the unusual behaviors encountered in these systems, typically nonuniversal scaling, are hardly compatible with the hypothesis of a second order phase transition. Moreover, the fact that the scaling laws are significantly violated and that the anomalous dimension is negative in many cases provides strong indications that the transitions in frustrated magnets are most probably of very weak first order. We then review the various perturbative and early nonperturbative approaches used to investigate these systems and argue that none of them provides a completely satisfactory description of the three-dimensional critical behavior. We then recall the principles of the nonperturbative approach---the effective average action method---that we have used to investigate the physics of frustrated magnets and show how it enables to clarify most of the problems encountered in the previous theoretical descriptions of frustrated magnets. First, we get an explanation of the long-standing mismatch between different perturbative approaches which consists in a nonperturbative mechanism of annihilation of fixed points between two and three dimensions. Secondly, we get a coherent picture of the physics of frustrated magnets in agreement with the numerical and experimental results. The central feature that emerges from our approach is the existence of scaling behaviors without fixed or pseudofixed point and that relies on a slowing down of the renormalization group flow in a whole region in the coupling constants space. This phenomenon allow us to explain the occurrence of generic weak first order behaviors and to understand the absence of universality in the critical behavior of frustrated magnets.
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.
Abstract In Chapter 14, the singular behavior of ferromagnetic systems with O(N) symmetry and short-range interactions, near a second order phase transition has been determined in the mean-field approximation, which is also a quasi-Gaussian approximation. The mean-field approximation predicts a set of universal properties, properties independent of the detailed structure of the microscopic Hamiltonian, the dimension of space, and, to a large extent, of the symmetry of systems. However, the leading corrections to the mean-field approximation, in dimensions smaller than or equal to four, diverge at the critical temperature, and the universal predictions of the mean-field approximation cannot be correct. Such a problem originates from the non-decoupling of scales and leads to the question of possible universality. In Chapter 9, the question has been answered in four dimensions using renormalization theory, and related renormalization group (RG) equations. Moreover, below four dimensions, in an expansion around the mean-field, the most singular terms near criticality can be also formally recovered from a continuum, low-mass φ4 field theory. More generally, following Wilson, to understand universality beyond the mean-field approximation, it is necessary to build a general renormalization group in the form of flow equations for effective Hamiltonians and to find fixed points of the flow equations. Near four dimensions, the flow equations can be approximated by the renormalization group of quantum field theory (QFT), and the fixed points and critical behaviours derived within the framework of the Wilson-Fisher ϵ expansion.
We present a lattice nonperturbative renormalization group (NPRG) approach to quantum XY spin models by using a mapping onto hardcore bosons. The NPRG takes as initial condition of the renormalization group flow the (local) limit of decoupled sites, allowing us to take into account the hardcore constraint exactly. The initial condition of the flow is equivalent to the large S classical results of the corresponding spin system. Furthermore, the hardcore constraint is conserved along the RG flow, and we can describe both local and long-distance fluctuations in a nontrivial way. We discuss a simple approximation scheme, and solve the corresponding flow equations. We compute both the zero-temperature thermodynamics and the finite temperature phase diagram on the square and cubic lattices. The NPRG allows us to recover the correct critical physics at finite temperature in two and three dimensions. The results compare well with numerical simulations.
The study of phase transitions in frustrated magnetic systems with O(N)×O(2) symmetry has been the subject of controversy for more than 20 years, with theoretical, numerical, and experimental results in disagreement. Even theoretical studies led to different results, with some predicting a first-order phase transition while others found it to be second-order. Recently, a series of results from both numerical simulations and theoretical analyses, in particular those based on the Conformal Bootstrap, have rekindled interest in this controversy, especially as they are still not in agreement with each other. Studies based on the functional renormalization group have played a major role in this controversy in the past, and we revisit these studies, taking them a step further by adding nontrivial second-order derivative terms to the derivative expansion of the effective action. We confirm the first-order nature of the phase transition for physical values of N, i.e., for N=2 and 3, in agreement with the latest results obtained with the Conformal Bootstrap. We also study another phase of the O(N)×O(2) models, called the sinusoidal phase, qualitatively confirming earlier perturbative results.