Instabilities of multiorbital electron systems

Abstract

In the present thesis, we consider interaction induced instabilities in different electronic models consisting of multiple orbitals. We employ the functional renormalization group method, to tackle the many-particle problem. The main goal of this work is the identification of leading instabilities of different interacting electron systems and the relevant energy scales for the onset of correlations. First, we recapitulate the functional renormalization group formalism and discuss details of its application. We proceed with the investigation of two models, a continuum model and a model on a checkerboard lattice, which exhibit a single quadratic band crossing point at the Fermi level. Here, we find that electron-electron interactions can lead to ordering with non-trivial topological properties, i.e. the existence of topologically protected edge states. We further discuss the emergence of superconductivity, when the band crossing point is shifted away from the Fermi surface. Then, we turn to more realistic models featuring quadratic and cubic band crossing points, namely the honeycomb bi- and trilayer, which are used to describe the graphene layered systems. We obtain rich phase diagrams, with antiferromagnetic spin-density, two types of charge-density waves and a quantum spin Hall phase, which features in the case of the trilayer topologically protected edge states. With interaction parameters extracted from ab initio calculations, we observe a close competition between the antiferromagnetic and quantum spin Hall state. Here, the precise shape of the interaction decides which instability is the leading one. A comparison of the energy scales of the ordering phenomena in tri-, bi- and single layer reveals that when the interaction parameters from ab initio are appropriately rescaled, the functional renormalization group can qualitatively reproduce experimental gap sizes in the respective materials consistently. Afterwards, we study a multiband model of the copper-based unconventional superconductors. This is motivated by a puzzling material trend in copper-based high-Tc superconductors, pointed out by Pavarini et al. [PRL. 87, 047003 (2001)]: Compounds with larger next-nearest-neighbor hopping generally exhibit larger critical temperatures, which cannot be easily understood within spin-fluctuation theories of the one-band Hubbard model. Therefore, we consider the extension of the original model by including additional orbitals. We investigate a two-band model with an additional 4s orbital within a two-patch approximation and the N-patch-scheme. By this, a general understanding of the influence of the additional orbitals is established. Afterwards, we additionally include the 3dz2 orbital and show that the material trend, found in experiments, can, at least, qualitatively be reproduced. Lastly, we go back to the single band Hubbard model and examine the consequences of the widely used approximation of neglecting the self-energy and the frequency dependence of the interaction vertex. We establish that the phase diagram obtained from the functional renormalization group is only quantitatively affected. From this study, we conclude that neglecting self-energy and frequency dependence, is a sensible approach, in order to obtain a reliable qualitative picture of the low energy behavior of a weakly or moderately coupled system at reasonable expense.