We present a theory of spontaneous Fermi surface deformations for half-filled Landau levels (filling factors of the form
ν=2n+1/2). We assume the half-filled level to be in a compressible, Fermi liquid state with a circular Fermi surface. The Landau level projection is incorporated via a modified effective electron-electron interaction and the resulting band structure is described within the Hartree-Fock approximation. We regulate the infrared divergences in the theory and probe the intrinsic tendency of the Fermi surface to deform through Pomeranchuk instabilities. We find that the corresponding susceptibility never diverges, though the system is asymptotically unstable in the
n→∞ limit.
Nematicity in quantum Hall systems has been experimentally well established at excited Landau levels. The mechanism of the symmetry breaking, however, is still unknown. Pomeranchuk instability of Fermi liquid parameter F_{ℓ}≤-1 in the angular momentum ℓ=2 channel has been argued to be the relevant mechanism, yet there are no definitive theoretical proofs. Here we calculate, using the variational Monte Carlo technique, Fermi liquid parameters F_{ℓ} of the composite fermion Fermi liquid with a finite layer width. We consider F_{ℓ} in different Landau levels n=0, 1, 2 as a function of layer width parameter η. We find that unlike the lowest Landau level, which shows no sign of Pomeranchuk instability, higher Landau levels show nematic instability below critical values of η. Furthermore, the critical value η_{c} is higher for the n=2 Landau level, which is consistent with observation of nematic order in ambient conditions only in the n=2 Landau levels. The picture emerging from our work is that approaching the true 2D limit brings half-filled higher Landau-level systems to the brink of nematic Pomeranchuk instability.
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.
Divergencies appearing in perturbation expansions of interacting many-body systems can often be removed by expanding around a suitably chosen renormalized (instead of the noninteracting) Hamiltonian. We describe such a renormalized perturbation expansion for interacting Fermi systems, which treats Fermi surface shifts and superconductivity with an arbitrary gap function via additive counterterms. The expansion is formulated explicitly for the Hubbard model to second order in the interaction. Numerical solutions of the self-consistency condition determining the Fermi surface and the gap function are calculated for the two-dimensional case. For the repulsive Hubbard model close to half-filling we find a superconducting state with d-wave symmetry, as expected. For Fermi levels close to the van Hove singularity a Pomeranchuk instability leads to Fermi surfaces with a broken square lattice symmetry, whose topology can be closed or open. For the attractive Hubbard model the second-order calculation yields an s-wave superconductivity with a weakly momentum dependent gap, whose size is reduced compared to the mean-field result.