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arXiv:2505.21210 · Physical review. E

Functional renormalization group approach to phonon-modified criticality: Anomalous dimension of strain and nonanalytic corrections to Hooke's law

Max O. Hansen, Julia von Rothkirch, Peter Kopietz

Published Oct 2, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

We study the interplay between critical isotropic elasticity and classical Ising criticality using a functional renormalization group (FRG) approach which is implemented such that the volume is fixed during the entire renormalization group flow. For dimensions slightly smaller than four, we use a simple truncation of the FRG flow equations to recover the fixed points of the constrained Ising model: the Gaussian fixed point G, the Ising fixed point I, the renormalized Ising fixed point R, and the spherical fixed point S. We show that the fixed points R and S are both characterized by a finite anomalous dimension y_{*}<0 of strain fluctuations, implying that the energy dispersion of longitudinal acoustic phonons exhibits a nonanalytic momentum dependence proportional to k^{1-y_{*}/2} for small momentum k. We also derive and solve flow equations for the free energy at constant strain and compute stress-strain relations in the vicinity of the fixed points. As a result, we reaffirm that Ising criticality, controlled by the fixed point I, is preempted by a bulk instability. Beyond that, we find that the stress-strain relation at R and S remains linear to leading order (Hooke's law), as long as the interaction between strain and Ising fluctuations is sufficiently weak. However, the finite anomalous dimension of strain fluctuations y_{*} gives rise to nonanalytic corrections to Hooke's law.

DOI
10.1103/kvsh-cvvk

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Renormalization group (RG) flows for systems subject to an external field can be derived either by fixing the field or by fixing the conjugate order parameter. We show how to implement these boundary conditions within the functional renormalization group approach. We derive and compare the corresponding flow equations for ϕ4ϕ^4ϕ4 theory and show that some scaling variables and scaling exponents associated with the linearized flow of the relevant three-point vertex in the vicinity of the Ising fixed point depend on the boundary conditions. We also discuss the effect of elasticity on Ising criticality. In this case two of the fixed points (namely the renormalized Ising fixed point and the spherical fixed point) obtained for constant strain are shifted to physically inaccessible regimes of parameter space when we perform the RG at constant stress.
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Using functional renormalization group methods, we study an effective low-energy model describing the Ising-nematic quantum critical point in two-dimensional metals. We treat both gapless fermionic and bosonic degrees of freedom on equal footing and explicitly calculate the momentum- and frequency-dependent effective interaction between the fermions mediated by the bosonic fluctuations. Following earlier work by S.-S. Lee for a one-patch model, Metlitski and Sachdev [Phys. Rev. B 82, 075127 (2010)] recently found within a field-theoretical approach that certain three-loop diagrams strongly modify the one-loop results and that the conventional 1/N1/N1/N expansion breaks down in this problem. We show that the singular three-loop diagrams considered by Metlitski and Sachdev are included in a rather simple truncation of the functional renormalization group flow equations for this model involving only irreducible vertices with two and three external legs. Our approximate solution of these flow equations explicitly yields the vertex corrections of this problem and allows us to calculate the anomalous dimension ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{\ensuremath{\psi}}$ of the fermion field.