Applications of the functional renormalization group to quantum liquids [Elektronische Ressource] / von Sascha Ledowski

Sujets

• Physik

Informations

• Publié par: goethe_universitat_frankfurt_am_main
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 12
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Applications of the functional
renormalization group to
quantum liquids
Dissertation
zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades
der Naturwissenschaften
vorgelegt beim Fachbereich Physik
der Johann Wolfgang Goethe - Universit¨at
in Frankfurt am Main
von
Sascha Ledowski
aus Langenhagen
Frankfurt (2007)
(D 30)vom Fachbereich Physik der
Johann Wolfgang Goethe - Universit¨at
als Dissertation angenommen.
Dekan: Prof. Dr. W. Aßmus
Gutachter : Prof. Dr. P. Kopietz
Prof. Dr. C. Gros
Prof. Dr. H. Frahm
Datum der Disputation: 19.08.2008Abstract
Non-perturbative effects and strong interactions still challenge the theoretical
treatment of condensed matter physics. One of the most promising tools to
study these effects is the renormalization group. This thesis is dedicated to the
investigation of approximation schemes and applications of the functional renor-
malization group for one-particle irreducible vertices.
Part of this work deals with weakly interacting bosons at the critical point of
Bose-Einstein condensation. Performing an expansion in relevance for physical
vertices a method is presented to calculate the full momentum dependence of
the self-energy. Application of this result in turn enables the calculation of the
interaction induced shift of the critical temperature.
The second part of this thesis investigates systems of interacting fermions in
low dimensions. Within the renormalization group framework a generally valid
exact self-consistency equation for the shape of the true Fermi surface is derived.
After the study of a toy model of two coupled metallic chains the two dimen-
sional system of an infinite array of metallic chains is considered. Bosonizing the
interaction by means of a Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation facilitates the
successful extrapolation of the weak coupling analysis to strong coupling. Here
these systems undergo a confinement transition as the renormalized interchain
hopping amplitude t vanishes.⊥
vContents
Abstract v
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The renormalization group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Outline of thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 The functional renormalization group 5
2.1 Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Generating functionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2.1 Disconnected Greensfunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2.2 Connected Greensfunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2.3 One-particle irreducible vertices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 Exact renormalization group equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.4 The cutoff function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5 Bosonization of the interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5.1 Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5.2 Interaction cutoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.6 Rescaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6.1 Reparametrization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6.2 Rescaling of momenta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6.3 Rescaling of vertices and fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3 Approximation methods 22
3.1 Expanding in relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.1.1 Hybrid approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.1.2 Bosonized interaction with interaction cutoff . . . . . . . . 23
3.1.3 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2 Adiabatic approximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.2.1 Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2.2 Derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
viCONTENTS vii
4 Weakly interacting bosons at the critical point of BEC 30
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.2 Functional RG for bosons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.2.1 Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.2.2 Solving the flow for relevant and marginal vertices . . . . . 36
4.2.3 Improving the flow equations: hybrid approach . . . . . . 37
4.3 Momentum dependence of the self-energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.4 The shift of the critical temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.5 Including all marginal terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.5.1 Flow of vertices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.5.2 The scaling function with only marginal terms . . . . . . . 47
4.6 Including the contributions from irrelevant vertices . . . . . . . . 49
4.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5 The Fermi surface 54
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.2 The Fermi surface as a fixed point manifold . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.3 Application: the compressibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6 Confinement in two coupled Luttinger liquids 62
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.2 The model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.3 Fermionic picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
6.3.1 Rescaling and classification according to relevance . . . . . 66
6.3.2 Flow of vertices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6.3.3 1-loop calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.3.4 The 2-point vertex in 2-loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
6.4 Bosonized interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.4.1 Setup of the RG. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.4.2 The Fermi surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6.4.3 Self-consistent 1-loop calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
6.4.4 Including the renormalized interaction . . . . . . . . . . . 86
6.4.5 The inclusion of umklapp scattering . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
7 Confinement in a two-dimensional system 94
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7.2 The model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
7.3 Rescaling and flow equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
7.4 Perturbative treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
7.5 Self-consistent 1-loop approximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
7.6 Inclusion of vertex renormalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103viii CONTENTS
7.6.1 3-point vertex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
7.6.2 Anomalous dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7.6.3 2-point vertex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7.6.4 Phase diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.6.5 Numerics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
8 Summary 112
8.1 Approximations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
8.2 Weakly interacting bosons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
8.3 The Fermi surface of interacting fermions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
A Weakly interacting bosons 117
A.1 Flow equations for bosonic 6-point and 8-point vertices . . . . . . 117
A.2 The anomalous dimension including irrelevant terms . . . . . . . . 118
Bibliography 121Chapter 1
Introduction
Strong correlations and non-perturbative effects lead to a variety of interest-
ing physical phenomena and still challenge the theoretical description. Whereas
in one dimension some quantum systems are exactly treatable for example by
bosonization or the Bethe-Ansatz, these schemes rely on stringent restrictions
and generally are not successful in higher dimensions. Concepts like the Lut-
tinger liquid likewise do not carry forward. On the other hand Landau’s Fermi
liquid theory which describes elementary excitations of normal fermionic systems
intermsofsocalledquasiparticlesandmeanfieldtheoryareoftenonlyapplicable
in three or more dimensions. Perturbation theory which tries to express physical
quantities in a power-series of a small coupling parameter fails by definition and
even in areas where it might be applicable it is often plagued by divergences.
Many prominent recent discoveries in condensed matter physics deal with
strongly interacting two-dimensional systems where neither of the approaches
above is adequate. In the second half of the last century a powerful tool termed
renormalization group emerged. It is manifestly non-perturbative and, apart
from numerical methods, one of the most promising methods to treat strong
interactions. Meanwhile it has been successfully applied to a variety of physical
systems and it is hoped for that it might help to understand such challenging
problems as high-T superconductivity.c
1.1 The renormalization group
Theearlydevelopmentsoftherenormalizationgroup(RG)camefromtheareaof
elementary particle physics. It started with the observation of Thomson in 1881
that naively evaluated the energy of a point like charged particle (electron) must
be infinite. Similar ultraviolet divergences appea