Interaction-induced charge orders with electronic origin occur as states of spontaneously broken symmetry in several materials platforms. An electronic mechanism for charge order requires an attractive component in the effective charge vertex. We put forward such a mechanism for the formation of unconventional charge density waves in a metal. These states result from the condensation of particle-hole pairs with finite wave vector and nonzero angular momentum and correspond to bond or loop current order on a lattice. The mechanism we describe can be viewed as Kohn Luttinger analysis in the particle-hole channel with finite transferred momentum. It incorporates one-loop spin and pairing corrections, which are then used as an input for a summation in the charge channel triggering an instability. We extend our analysis to a spin-fluctuation approach, where the effective charge interaction is dressed by the particle-hole ladder with exchanged momentum. We argue that this mechanism works for weakly interacting metals with a nested Fermi surface and a large number of fermion flavors. We apply the Kohn-Luttinger-like approach to square–PLXINSERT-, and triangular-lattice Hubbard models with SU ( N f ) flavour symmetry and show that it leads to different types of p -wave charge density waves. We also study effects beyond weak coupling at and away from Van Hove filling in terms of a phenomenological model with additional exchange interaction. In the vicinity of Van Hove filling, we obtain d -wave charge density waves with wave vectors determined by nesting as leading instabilities. In addition, we find another charge density wave with wave vector K / 4 on the triangular lattice on both sides of the Van Hove filling. We demonstrate that this K / 4 instability can win the competition against pairing for N f = 4 via an unbiased functional renormalization group calculation.
Several new classes of compounds can be modeled in first approximation by electrons on the triangular lattice that interact through on-site repulsion
U as well as nearest-neighbor repulsion
V. This extended Hubbard model on a triangular lattice has been studied mostly in the strong coupling limit for only a few types of instabilities. Using the extended two-particle self-consistent approach (ETPSC), that is valid at weak to intermediate coupling, we present an unbiased study of the density and interaction dependent crossover diagram for spin- and charge-density wave instabilities of the normal state at arbitrary wave vector. When
U dominates over
V and electron filling is large, instabilities are chiefly in the spin sector and are controlled mostly by Fermi surface properties. Increasing
V eventually leads to charge instabilities. In the latter case, it is mostly the wave vector dependence of the vertex that determines the wave vector of the instability rather than Fermi surface properties. At small filling, nontrivial instabilities appear only beyond the weak coupling limit. There again, charge-density wave instabilities are favored over a wide range of dopings by large
V at wave vectors corresponding to $\sqrt{(3)}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\sqrt{(3)}$ superlattice in real space. Commensurate fillings do not play a special role for this instability. Increasing
U leads to competition with ferromagnetism. At negative values of
U or
V, neglecting superconducting fluctuations, one finds that charge instabilities are favored. In general, the crossover diagram presents a rich variety of instabilities. We also show that thermal charge-density wave fluctuations in the renormalized-classical regime can open a pseudogap in the single-particle spectral weight, just as spin or superconducting fluctuations.
We show that unconventional spin order arises naturally in two-component dipolar Fermi gases of atoms or molecules, which recently became accessible experimentally, in optical lattices. Using an unbiased functional renormalization-group analysis, we find that dipolar interactions lead to an instability of the gas toward an $\ensuremath{\ell}=1$ spin-density wave state. This phase is the particle-hole analog of spin-triplet,
p-wave Cooper pairs. The order parameter for such spin-density waves of
p-wave orbital symmetry is a vector in spin space and, moreover, is defined on lattice bonds rather than on lattice sites. We determine the rich quantum phase diagram of dipolar fermions at half filling on the square lattice as a function of the dipolar orientation and discuss how these exotic spin-density waves emerge amidst competition with superfluid and charge-density wave phases.
We study the Kohn-Luttinger effect in a two-dimensional (2D) nested fermion liquid with a repulsive interaction via the renormalization group method and identify the resulting order parameter symmetry. Using the band structure of the 2D Hubbard model close to half-filling as a prototype, we construct an effective low-energy theory. We use multidimensional bosonization to incorporate the zero-sound channel and find marginal Fermi liquid behavior in the absence of any instability. We show an analog of the Landau theorem in nested fermion liquids, which serves as the criterion of the BCS instability. Including repulsive or antiferromagnetic exchange interactions in the low-energy theory, we show that the ${\mathrm{d}}_{{\mathrm{x}}^{2}\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}{\mathrm{y}}^{2}}$-wave BCS channel is renormalized to be the most attractive. Below half-filling, when the nesting is not perfect, there is competition between the spin-density-wave (SDW) and the BCS channels; when the SDW coupling is small enough, there occurs a ${\mathrm{d}}_{{\mathrm{x}}^{2}\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}{\mathrm{y}}^{2}}$-wave superconducting instability at sufficiently low temperatures.
The aim of this thesis it to contribute to three open problems in the theory of itinerant electron systems in two spatial dimensions. Firstly, the mechanism for charge density wave formation in the transition metal dichalcogenides is a debated subject. In this thesis it is shown that charge density wave formation is possible via a purely electronic mechanism in monolayer vanadium diselenide. The competition of superconductivity and density wave formation is taken into account using the renormalisation group. As the Fermi surface is tuned to perfect nesting, a charge density wave phase emerges when the Heisenberg exchange interaction is of the order of the contact Coulomb repulsion. Secondly, the search for materials which exhibit topological superconductivity is ongoing. Possible candidates are strongly spin-orbit-coupled metals. In this thesis a square-lattice Hubbard model with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling and one of the Fermi surfaces close to a Lifshitz transition is examined. The metal is shown to be generically unstable to the formation of mixed-parity superconductivity with a helical triplet component via a renormalisation group analysis. Thirdly, the breakdown of Fermi liquid theory close to a quantum critical point is still not well understood. In this thesis a functional renormalisation group analysis is presented using a soft frequency cutoff, investigating a general class of Pomeranchuk instabilities with 𝑁_𝑏 flavours of boson. At small 𝑁_𝑏 the theory is characterised by weakly non-Fermi-liquid behaviour of the electrons and 𝑧≈2 dynamics for the order parameter fluctuations. For large 𝑁_𝑏, the theory crosses over to 𝑧≈1 scaling and non-Fermi-liquid behaviour.
Abstract We study competing orders of spinless fermions in the triangular-lattice Hubbard model with nearest-neighbor interaction. We calculate the effective, momentum-resolved two-particle vertex in an unbiased way in terms of the functional renormalization group method and compare two different schemes for the momentum discretization, one based on dividing the Fermi surface into patches and one based on a channel decomposition. We study attractive and repulsive nearest-neighbor interaction and find a competition of pairing and charge instabilities. In the attractive case, a Pomeranchuk instability occurs at Van Hove filling and f-wave and p-wave pairing emerge when the filling is reduced. In the repulsive case, we obtain a charge density wave at Van Hove filling and extended p-wave pairing with reduced filling. The p-wave pairing solution is doubly degenerate and can realize chiral
p+ip p + i p superconductivity with different Chern numbers in the ground state. We discuss implications for strongly correlated spin-orbit coupled hexagonal electron systems such as moiré heterostructures. Graphic Abstract
We consider a system of 2D fermions on a triangular lattice with well separated electron and hole pockets of similar sizes, centered at certain high-symmetry points in the Brillouin zone. We first analyze Stoner-type spin-density-wave (SDW) magnetism. We show that SDW order is degenerate at the mean-field level. Beyond mean-field, the degeneracy is lifted and is either ${120}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ ``triangular'' order (same as for localized spins), or a collinear order with antiferromagnetic spin arrangement on two-thirds of sites, and nonmagnetic on the rest of sites. We also study a time-reversal symmetric directional spin bond order, which emerges when some interactions are repulsive and some are attractive. We show that this order is also degenerate at a mean-field level, but beyond mean-field the degeneracy is again lifted. We next consider the evolution of a magnetic order in a magnetic field starting from an SDW state in zero field. We show that a field gives rise to a canting of an SDW spin configuration. In addition, it necessarily triggers the directional bond order, which, we argue, is linearly coupled to the SDW order in a finite field. We derive the corresponding term in the free energy. Finally, we consider the interplay between an SDW order and superconductivity and charge order. For this, we analyze the flow of the couplings within parquet renormalization group (pRG) scheme. We show that magnetism wins if all interactions are repulsive and there is little energy space for pRG to develop. However, if system parameters are such that pRG runs over a wide range of energies, the system may develop either superconductivity or an unconventional charge order, which breaks time-reversal symmetry.