Functional renormalization group for strongly interacting Fermi systems

Abstract

The treatment of strongly interacting two-dimensional Fermi systems constitutes one of the most challenging problems in the field of condensed matter physics. Many theoretical works focused on the strongly coupled Hubbard model, since it is expected to capture the most important physics of cuprate superconductors. Due to our methodological improvements and understanding of the frequency dependence of the two-particle vertex function, the functional renormalization group combined with the dynamical mean field theory can now be used to study competing correlations in the strongly interacting regime. While limited to moderate interaction strengths, the functional renormalization group describes efficiently systems with a hierarchy of different energy scales and competing correlations. For instance, it provides definite evidence for d-wave superconductivity in the two-dimensional Hubbard model at moderate coupling. In a first project, we study the frequency dependence of the one-particle irreducible vertex function generated by the functional renormalization group flow. The frequency dependence, which becomes singular for strong interactions, appears to be important already for moderate couplings, and it cannot be represented by separate channels each depending on a single linear combination of frequencies. For strongly interacting systems, the dynamical mean field theory captures strong local correlation effects nonperturbatively. With this approximation, we study the impact of local correlations on the magnetic susceptibility. The local dynamics strongly affects the spin response function and its momentum dependence. In contrast to the widely used random-phase approximation with self-energy corrections that predicts Néel antiferromagnetic order, the local vertex corrections favor an incommensurate order similar to the ordering instability predicted by the Fermi surface geometry, as for weakly interacting systems. The dynamical mean field theory is also used as starting point for the functional renormalization group flow. We demonstrate that, due to our improvements for the parametrization of the vertex function, this approach is actually able to access the strong coupling physics. Moreover, we derive a flow scheme that conserves the local contributions and reduces the truncation error of the flow equations. In the strongly interacting regime, we capture strong d-wave pairing correlations driven by magnetic fluctuations with a mechanism similar to the one observed in the weakly interacting system.