This thesis is concerned with recent progress made for the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal in two space dimensions. Firstly, we develop a field-theoretic functional renormalization group formalism for the low-energy effective field theories for non-Fermi liquids by using renormalizable field theories for metals. The formalism is applied to the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal in two space dimensions. In the space of coupling functions, we identify the interacting fixed point with a vanishing nesting angle. For theories with non-zero nesting angles, the coupling functions acquire universal momentum dependent profiles controlled by the bare nesting angle before flowing towards a superconducting state in the low-energy limit. The superconducting instability is inevitable because “lukewarm” electrons that are coherent enough to be susceptible to pairing are subject to a universal attractive interaction mediated by the critical spin fluctuations. Despite the superconducting instability being unavoidable, theories with repulsive or weakly attractive four-fermion interaction at a UV scale must flow through a “bottleneck” where there is a slow RG flow due to the proximity to non-Hermitian fixed points. This bottleneck of the RG flow controls the scaling behaviour of the normal state and the “quasi-universal” pathway to superconductivity. Secondly, we show that momentum-dependent quantum corrections dynamically give rise to a curved momentum-spacetimes for quasiparticles. In the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal, the curved momentum-spacetime geometry arises from a momentum-dependent red shift. With increasing nesting angle, the red shift near the hot spots becomes stronger while the hot region on the Fermi surface with the strong red shift shrinks. This creates the possibility of realizing a momentum-space black hole horizon where electrons are perpetually slowed down as they approach the hot spots. However, the singularity in the momentum-dependent red shift is cut off at finite temperatures above the superconducting transition temperature. Finally, we study a magnetic impurity immersed in the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal. Critical spin fluctuations represented by bosonic fields compete with the conduction electrons to couple with the impurity spin. In the low-energy limit, the electron-impurity (Kondo) coupling dominates over the boson-impurity coupling. However, the Kondo screening is suppressed by the boson with an increasing severity when the hot spots connected by the antiferromagnetic ordering wavevector are better nested. The origin of this suppression of Kondo screening lies in the ultraviolet/infrared (UV/IR) mixing: bosons that carry large momenta up to the UV cutoff actively suppress the Kondo screening at low energies.
This thesis is concerned with recent progress made for the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal in two space dimensions. Firstly, we develop a field-theoretic functional renormalization group formalism for the low-energy effective field theories for non-Fermi liquids by using renormalizable field theories for metals. The formalism is applied to the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal in two space dimensions. In the space of coupling functions, we identify the interacting fixed point with a vanishing nesting angle. For theories with non-zero nesting angles, the coupling functions acquire universal momentum dependent profiles controlled by the bare nesting angle before flowing towards a superconducting state in the low-energy limit. The superconducting instability is inevitable because “lukewarm” electrons that are coherent enough to be susceptible to pairing are subject to a universal attractive interaction mediated by the critical spin fluctuations. Despite the superconducting instability being unavoidable, theories with repulsive or weakly attractive four-fermion interaction at a UV scale must flow through a “bottleneck” where there is a slow RG flow due to the proximity to non-Hermitian fixed points. This bottleneck of the RG flow controls the scaling behaviour of the normal state and the “quasi-universal” pathway to superconductivity. Secondly, we show that momentum-dependent quantum corrections dynamically give rise to a curved momentum-spacetimes for quasiparticles. In the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal, the curved momentum-spacetime geometry arises from a momentum-dependent red shift. With increasing nesting angle, the red shift near the hot spots becomes stronger while the hot region on the Fermi surface with the strong red shift shrinks. This creates the possibility of realizing a momentum-space black hole horizon where electrons are perpetually slowed down as they approach the hot spots. However, the singularity in the momentum-dependent red shift is cut off at finite temperatures above the superconducting transition temperature. Finally, we study a magnetic impurity immersed in the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal. Critical spin fluctuations represented by bosonic fields compete with the conduction electrons to couple with the impurity spin. In the low-energy limit, the electron-impurity (Kondo) coupling dominates over the boson-impurity coupling. However, the Kondo screening is suppressed by the boson with an increasing severity when the hot spots connected by the antiferromagnetic ordering wavevector are better nested. The origin of this suppression of Kondo screening lies in the ultraviolet/infrared (UV/IR) mixing: bosons that carry large momenta up to the UV cutoff actively suppress the Kondo screening at low energies.
We show that anisotropic quantum corrections can dynamically give rise to curved momentum-spacetimes for quasiparticles in metals. In the (2+1)-dimensional antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal, a curved momentum-spacetime arises as the critical spin fluctuations generate red shift that dilates frequency of electron unevenly on the Fermi surface. As the disparity of the momentum-dependent red shift is controlled by the shape of the Fermi surface, the momentum-spacetime geometry that emerges at low energies depends on the bare nesting angle of the Fermi surface. With increasing nesting angle, the region in which electron motion is slowed down by critical spin fluctuations shrinks. On the other hand, the increasing nesting angle makes the red shift stronger near the hot spots due to the weakened screening of the interaction. These competing effects result in a nonmonotonic dependence of the cyclotron frequency of electron on the nesting angle of the Fermi surface. The red shift that becomes more singular at the hot spots with increasing nesting angle creates a possibility of realizing a momentum-space black hole horizon beyond a critical nesting angle: The electron motion becomes ``perpetually'' slowed down as it approaches a hot spot in the same way that the motion of a free falling object freezes near the event horizon of a black hole with respect to an asymptotic observer. However, the analogous horizon in momentum space does not lead to a vanishing cyclotron frequency because the metric singularity at the hot spots is cut off by thermal effects present above the nonzero superconducting transition temperature.
We study the dynamics of critical spin fluctuations and hot electrons at the metallic antiferromagnetic quantum critical points with Z2 and O(2) spin symmetries, building on earlier works on the O(3) symmetric theory. The interacting theories in 2+1 dimensions are approached from 3+1-dimensional theories in the $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ expansion that tunes the codimension of Fermi surface as a control parameter. The low-energy physics of the Z2 and O(2) theories qualitatively differ from each other and also from that of the O(3) theory. The difference is caused by higher-order quantum corrections beyond the one-loop order that are important even to the leading order in $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$. The naive loop expansion breaks down due to dynamical quenching of kinetic energy: the speed of the collective mode (c) and the Fermi velocity perpendicular to the magnetic ordering vector (v) become vanishingly small at low energies. What sets the three theories apart is the hierarchy that emerges between the quenched kinetic terms. At the infrared fixed point, c/v becomes 0, 1, and $\ensuremath{\infty}$ in the Z2, O(2), and O(3) theories, respectively. At intermediate energy scales, the slow renormalization group (RG) flows of c and v toward their fixed point values create approximate scale invariance controlled by approximate marginal parameters. The manifold of those quasifixed points and the RG flow therein determines crossovers from scaling behaviors with transient critical exponents at intermediate energy scales to the universal scaling in the low-energy limit. If the symmetry group is viewed as a tuning parameter, then the O(2) theory corresponds to a multicritical point which has one additional quasimarginal parameter than the other two theories.
In this thesis, we study the low-energy effective theory for the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal in two dimensions. The theory has been the subject of intense study for more than twenty years, due to the novel physics of non-Fermi liquid metals and its potential relevance to high-temperature superconductors and heavy-fermion compounds. In the first part of the thesis, we present the perturbative study of the theory in 3 minus epsilon space dimensions by extending the earlier one-loop analysis to higher-loop orders. We show that the expansion is not organized by the standard loop expansion, and a two-loop graph becomes as important as one-loop graphs even in the small epsilon limit due to an infrared singularity caused by an emergent quasilocality. This qualitatively changes the nature of the infrared fixed point, and the epsilon expansion is controlled only after the two-loop effect is taken into account. Furthermore, we show that a ratio between velocities emerges as a small parameter, which suppresses a large class of diagrams. We show that the critical exponents do not receive quantum corrections beyond the linear order in epsilon in the limit that the ratio of velocities vanishes. In the second part of the thesis, we present a nonperturbative solution to the theory in two dimensions based on an ansatz that is inspired by the perturbative analysis. Being a strongly coupled theory, it can still be solved reliably in the low-energy limit as quantum fluctuations are organized by the ratio of velocities that dynamically flows to zero in the low-energy limit. We predict the exact critical exponents that govern the universal scaling of physical observables at low temperatures.
In metals, low-energy effective theories are characterized by a set of coupling functions. Among them, the angle-dependent Fermi momentum specifies the size and shape of Fermi surface. Since the Fermi momentum grows incessantly under the renormalization group flow, a metallic fixed point is defined only modulo a rescaling of Fermi momentum. In this paper, we discuss the physical consequences of this projective nature of fixed points for non-Fermi liquids with hot Fermi surfaces. The first is the absence of a unique dynamical critical exponent that dictates the relative scaling between energy and momentum. The second is mismatches between the scaling dimensions of couplings and their relevancy. Nonetheless, each projective fixed point is characterized by a few marginal and relevant coupling functions, and the notion of universality survives. We illustrate our findings by charting the space of projective fixed points and extracting their universal properties for the Ising-nematic quantum critical metal beyond the patch theory. To control the theory, we use the dimensional regularization scheme that tunes the co-dimension of Fermi surface. Near the upper critical dimension, two exactly marginal coupling functions span the space of stable projective fixed points: functions that specify the shape of the Fermi surface and the angle-dependent Fermi velocity. All other coupling functions, including the Landau functions and the universal pairing interaction, are fixed by those two marginal functions. With decreasing dimensions, the forward scattering remains irrelevant while the pairing interaction becomes relevant near two dimensions. In two dimensions, it is expected that the universal superconducting fluctuations lower the symmetry of the non-Fermi liquid realized above the superconducting transition temperatures from the loop U(1) group to a proper subgroup.
In this thesis we study the scaling properties of unconventional metals that arise at quantum critical points using low-energy effective field theories. Due to high rate of scatterings between electrons and critical fluctuations of the order parameter associated with spontaneous symmetry breaking, Landau’s Fermi liquid theory breaks down at the critical points. The theories that describe these critical points generally flow into strong coupling regimes at low energy in two space dimensions. Here we develop and utilize renormalization group methods that are suitable for the interacting non-Fermi liquids. We focus on the critical points arising at excitonic, and commensurate spin and charge density wave transitions. By controlled analyses we find stable non-Fermi liquid and marginal Fermi liquid states, and extract the scaling behaviour. The field theories for the non-Fermi liquids are characterized by symmetry groups, local curvature of the Fermi surface, the dispersion of the order parameter fluctuations, and dimensions of space and Fermi surface.
We use renormalization group (RG) analysis and dimensional regularization techniques to study potential superconductivity-inducing four-fermion interactions in systems with critical Fermi surfaces of general dimensions (m) and codimensions $(d\ensuremath{-}m)$, arising as a result of quasiparticle interaction with a gapless Ising-nematic order parameter. These are examples of non-Fermi liquid states in d spatial dimensions. Our formalism allows us to treat the corresponding zero-temperature low-energy effective theory in a controlled approximation close to the upper critical dimension d=dc(m). The fixed points are identified from the RG flow equations, as functions of d and m. We find that the flow toward the non-Fermi liquid fixed point is preempted by Cooper pair formation for both the physical cases of (d=3,m=2) and (d=2,m=1). In fact, there is a strong enhancement of superconductivity by the order parameter fluctuations at the quantum critical point.