Although the functional renormalization group (fRG) is by now a well-established method for investigating correlated electron systems, it is still undergoing significant technical and conceptual improvements. In particular, the motivation to optimally exploit the parallelism of modern computing platforms has recently led to the development of the "truncated-unity" functional renormalization group (TU-fRG). Here, we review this fRG variant, and we provide its extension to multiband systems with spin-orbit coupling. Furthermore, we discuss some aspects of the implementation and outline opportunities and challenges ahead for predicting the ground-state ordering and emergent energy scales for a wide class of quantum materials.
Although the functional renormalization group (fRG) is by now a well-established method for investigating correlated electron systems, it is still undergoing significant technical and conceptual improvements. In particular, the motivation to optimally exploit the parallelism of modern computing platforms has recently led to the development of the "truncated-unity" functional renormalization group (TU-fRG). Here, we review this fRG variant, and we provide its extension to multiband systems with spin-orbit coupling. Furthermore, we discuss some aspects of the implementation and outline opportunities and challenges ahead for predicting the ground-state ordering and emergent energy scales for a wide class of quantum materials.
TU2FRG: a scalable approach for truncated unity functional renormalization group in generic fermionic models
Abstract Describing the emergence of phases of condensed matter is one of the central challenges in physics. For this purpose many numerical and analytical methods have been developed, each with their own strengths and limitations. The functional renormalization group is one of these methods bridging between efficiency and accuracy. In this paper we derive a new truncated unity (TU) approach unifying real- and momentum space TU, called TU 2 2 FRG. This formalism significantly improves the scaling compared to conventional momentum (TU)FRG when applied to large unit-cell models and models where the translational symmetry is broken. Graphic abstract
Renormalization group methods are well-established tools for the (numerical) investigation of the low-energy properties of correlated quantum many-body systems, allowing us to capture their scale-dependent nature. The functional renormalization group (FRG) allows us to continuously evolve a microscopic model action to an effective low-energy action as a function of decreasing energy scales via an exact functional flow equation, which is then approximated by some truncation scheme to facilitate computation. Here, we report on our implementation of multiloop FRG, an extended truncation scheme recently developed for electronic FRG calculations, within the pseudofermion functional renormalization group (pf-FRG) framework for interacting quantum spin systems. We discuss in detail the conceptual intricacies of the flow equations generated by the multiloop truncation, as well as essential refinements to the integration scheme for the resulting integrodifferential equations. To benchmark our approach, we analyze antiferromagnetic Heisenberg models on the pyrochlore, simple cubic, and face-centered cubic lattice, discussing the convergence of physical observables for higher-loop calculations and comparing with existing results where available. Combined, these methodological refinements systematically improve the pf-FRG approach to one of the numerical tools of choice when exploring frustrated quantum magnetism in higher spatial dimensions.
The channel-decomposed functional renormalization group (FRG) approach, most recently presented in the variant of truncated-unity FRG (TUFRG), has so far been used for various two-dimensional model systems. Yet for many interesting material systems the third spatial dimension is of clear relevance. Therefore, FRG schemes working in three spatial dimensions (3D) are definitely on the wish list. Here we demonstrate that a 3D TUFRG scheme can be set up in a straightforward extension of previous two-dimensional codes and gives physically sensible results with affordable numerical effort, regarding both the qualitative and quantitative descriptions. The computed phase diagram of the three-dimensional Hubbard model at half filling or perfect nesting shows a phase transition to a $(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi})$-ordered antiferromagnetic ground state for repulsive interactions at an energy scale that compares well with other numerical approaches in the literature. Furthermore, the method allowed us to detect a d-wave pairing and a concurring $(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi},0)$ antiferromagnetic ground state in the hole-doped Hubbard model.
A wide variety of phenomena in condensed matter systems is driven primarily by interactions between electrons in the system. This work is concerned with the application of functional renormalization group (fRG) as a generalized solver for the multi-band Hamiltonians that describe these systems. We consider a decoupled formulation of the fRG equations that is optimized in the frequency and momentum domains and retains the flow of relevant modes in the system. Approximate truncations that extend the scheme to arbitrary multiband systems are addressed. This optimized decoupling is then used to derive the flow equations that describe fluctuations in model Hamiltonians for Cuprate and Pnictide superconductors. We construct a full phase diagram of the systems studied as a function of doping, temperature and coupling. Access to the frequency modes in the system allows us to explore the impact of coupling phonons to these model Hamiltonians. Alterations to the diagram due to electron-phonon coupling is derived. The results of the decoupled formulation is in agreement with results in the literature for many of the models considered. Further the fRG captures the sensitivity of susceptibilities of Cuprate Hamiltonians to band structure, the enhanced role of Hunds coupling in Pnictide systems and the impact of phonons in multiband Hamiltonians.
Strongly correlated electron systems host a plethora of fascinating physical phenomena and pose formidable challenges in their theoretical analysis. The challenges originate from the inherent complexity of the quantum many-body problem - no classical computer will ever be able to fully simulate these systems - and the lack of an effective single-particle picture, as the strong mutual interactions make it impossible to regard the electrons as independent from each other. As a consequence, most systems of correlated electrons can only be tackled approximately and numerically. In this thesis, we develop a set of numerical methods for strongly correlated electrons, which are inspired by the renormalization group (RG) idea of including degrees of freedom successively from high to low energies. This enables an efficient organization of the diverse fluctuations and is key for an accurate treatment of interacting quantum systems, where collective behavior and composite objects emerge at energy scales far below those of the microscopic constituents. In a first part, we consider the functional renormalization group (fRG), a versatile framework to study the flow of correlation functions upon modulating the underlying action. Though widely used, it has often acted more as a qualitative rather than quantitative method, due a nontransparent approximation induced by truncating the hierarchy of flow equations. We develop an iterative multiloop fRG (mfRG) scheme, which ameliorates this approximation and eliminates many of the drawbacks of fRG experienced hitherto. In particular, it restores the independence of results on the choice of RG regulator and establishes a rigorous relation to the parquet formalism. Furthermore, we show how to derive the flow equations directly from self-consistent many-body relations. This establishes a form of diagrammatic resummations at the two-particle level which circumvents ill-behaved two-particle-irreducible vertices. An application to the prototypical two-dimensional Hubbard model illustrates how our multiloop scheme elevates the fRG approach to correlated electron systems to a quantitative level. Secondly, we employ the numerical renormalization group (NRG), based on the iterative diagonalization of impurity Hamiltonians, in conjunction with the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) to describe local correlations in multiorbital systems. Having access to arbitrarily low temperatures and energies, NRG is a unique, real-frequency impurity solver for DMFT. It has been pivotal to the understanding of Hund metals, where strong correlations arise from Hund's rules even at moderate Coulomb repulsion. Building on recent methodological advances, we extend the range of application of DMFT+NRG from orbital-degenerate models to more realistic setups: We first study orbital differentiation in a three-orbital Hund-metal model and unravel key effects of the orbital-selective Mott transition. In a real-materials setting, we then incorporate the bandstructure from density functional theory (DFT) and analyze the archetypal Hund-metal material Sr2RuO4. We particularly follow its RG flow to the Fermi-liquid regime at previously inaccessible low temperatures and generally present DFT+DMFT+NRG as a new computational paradigm for strongly correlated materials. As a side project of our fRG work, we develop an algorithm to count Feynman diagrams from closed many-body relations, which reveals the surprising outcome that totally irreducible contributions are responsible for the factorial growth in the number of diagrams. Additionally, we use NRG to study transport through three-level quantum dots and provide benchmark data for other RG methods, which aim at further describing these systems in nonequilibrium.
During the last two decades, functional renormalization group (FRG) emerged as a versatile class of methodologies which can be used in a variety of cases, ranging from statistical mechanics models and interacting field theories to condensed matter strongly interacting systems. The development of FRG techniques from one hand had a methodological side – aimed at testing different ways to handle with approximations of the functional equations – and from the other concurred to define FRG as a method to be seriously considered to face new and poorly/not yet understood problems. Both directions, i.e. improve and test known techniques and proposed refinements against well known problems and concretely deal with non-testbed problems, have motivated the work done during the PhD. This thesis aims at present, provide details and put in perspective results obtained during my PhD in the last three years. Many of such results have been published, in a more synthetic way, in peer review journals, others are going to appear online soon. Some others will probably remain only in this thesis, but together with the published material will be instrumental to delineate a path leading to a deeper understanding and a (hopefully) clearer presentation of potentialities and issues of the FRG method.