We study the effects of spin-antisymmetric interactions on the stability of a Landau–Fermi liquid on the square lattice, using the generalized Pomeranchuk method for two-dimensional lattice systems. In particular, we analyze interactions that could induce instabilities of the so-called spin-split type, that is when spin-up and spin-down Fermi surfaces are displaced with respect to each other. The phase space is studied as a function of the strength of the interaction V, the electron chemical potential μ and an external magnetic field h. We find that such interactions produce in general an enhancement of the instability region of the Landau–Fermi liquid. More interestingly, in certain regions of the V–μ phase space, we find a reentrant behavior as a function of the magnetic field h, similar to that found in recent experiments, e.g. in URu₂Si₂ and Sr₃Ru₂O₇.
Interactions in Fermi systems can induce a "Pomeranchuk instability" leading to orientational symmetry breaking, that is, nematic order. In a metallic system close to such an instability the Fermi surface is easily deformed by anisotropic perturbations, and exhibits enhanced collective fluctuations. We discuss electrons on a square lattice near a Pomeranchuk instability with d-wave symmetry. The strong response of such a system to a small orthorhombic perturbation can explain naturally the large in-plane anisotropy of electronic and magnetic properties observed in detwinned YBCO crystals. Fluctuations in a quantum critical regime near the instability provide a mechanism for non-Fermi liquid behavior. They lead to a singular forward scattering interaction, which destroys fermionic quasi-particles on the whole Fermi surface except at "cold spots" on the Brillouin zone diagonal. The decay rate for DC transport is linear in temperature except at the cold spots, where conventional Fermi liquid behavior survives. In clean systems this gives rise to a T 3/2 temperature dependence of the DC resistivity, as observed in some overdoped cuprates. In the presence of disorder, the resistivity is linear in T at low temperatures.
We analyze the behavior of an itinerant two-dimensional Fermi system near a charge nematic
(n=2) Pomeranchuk instability in terms of the Landau Fermi-liquid (FL) theory. A key object of our study is the fully renormalized vertex function ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$, related to the Landau interaction function. We derive ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$ for a model case of the long-range interaction in the nematic channel. Already within the random-phase approximation (RPA), the vertex is singular near the instability. The full vertex, obtained by resumming the ladder series composed of the RPA vertices, differs from the RPA result by a multiplicative renormalization factor ${Z}_{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$, related to the single-particle residue
Z and effective-mass renormalization ${m}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}/m$. We employ the Pitaevski-Landau identities, which express the derivatives of the self-energy in terms of ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$, to obtain and solve a set of coupled nonlinear equations for ${Z}_{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$,
Z, and ${m}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}/m$. We show that near the transition the system enters a critical FL regime, where ${Z}_{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}\ensuremath{\sim}Z\ensuremath{\propto}{(1+{g}_{c,2})}^{1/2}$ and ${m}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}/m\ensuremath{\approx}1/Z$, where
gc,2 is the
n=2 charge Landau component which approaches $\ensuremath{-}1$ at the instability. We construct the Landau function of the critical FL and show that all but
gc,2 Landau components diverge at the critical point. We also show that in the critical regime the one-loop result for the self-energy $\ensuremath{\Sigma}(K)\ensuremath{\propto}\ensuremath{\int}dPG(P)D(K\ensuremath{-}P)$ is asymptotically exact if one identifies the effective interaction
D with the RPA form of ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$.
Electron-electron interactions can induce Fermi surface deformations which break the point-group symmetry of the lattice structure of the system. In the vicinity of such a "Pomeranchuk instability" the Fermi surface is easily deformed by anisotropic perturbations, and exhibits enhanced collective fluctuations. We show that critical Fermi surface fluctuations near a d-wave Pomeranchuk instability in two dimensions lead to large anisotropic decay rates for single-particle excitations, which destroy Fermi-liquid behavior over the whole surface except at the Brillouin zone diagonal.
The cure to the
ℓ=1 Landau-Pomeranchuk (L-P) instabilities in translationally invariant fermions is shown to be a state with an anisotropic gap at the fermi-surface. For higher
ℓ and for fermions on a lattice, general criteria for long wavelength instabilities and their cure are found in terms of the derivatives of the single particle self-energy with respect to momentum for spin-symmetric instabilities and with respect to magnetic field for spin-antisymmetric instabilities. The results may be relevant to identifying hidden order parameters found in many metals.
We develop a procedure for detecting Fermi liquid instabilities by extending the analysis of Pomeranchuk to two-dimensional lattice systems. The method is very general and straightforward to apply, thus, provides a powerful tool for the search of exotic phases. We test it by applying it to a lattice electron model with interactions leading to
s- and
d-wave instabilities.
We analyze a two-dimensional Pomeranchuk-nematic instability, trigger by the Landau parameter
F2<0, in the presence of a small magnetic field. Using Landau Fermi-liquid theory in the isotropic phase, we analyze the collective modes near the quantum critical point ${F}_{2}=\ensuremath{-}1,{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{c}=0$ (where ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{c}$ is the cyclotron frequency). We focus on the effects of parity symmetry breaking on the Fermi-surface deformation. We show that the linear response approximation of the Landau-Silin equation is not sufficient to study the critical regime and it is necessary to compute corrections at least of order ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{c}^{2}$. Identifying the slowest oscillation mode in the disordered phase, we compute the phase diagram for the isotropic/nematic phase transition in terms of
F2 and ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{c}$.