Experimental demonstrations of tunable correlation effects in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene have put two-dimensional moire quantum materials at the forefront of condensed-matter research. Other twisted few-layer graphitic structures, boron-nit
ride, and homo- or hetero-stacks of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have further enriched the opportunities for analysis and utilization of correlations in these systems. Recently, within the latter material class, strong spin-orbit coupling or excitonic physics were experimentally explored. The observation of a Mott insulating state and other fascinating collective phenomena such as generalized Wigner crystals, stripe phases and quantum anomalous Hall insulators confirmed the relevance of many-body interactions, and demonstrated the importance of their extended range. Since the interaction, its range, and the filling can be tuned experimentally by twist angle, substrate engineering and gating, we here explore Fermi surface instabilities and resulting phases of matter of hetero-bilayer TMDs. Using an unbiased renormalization group approach, we establish in particular that hetero-bilayer TMDs are unique platforms to realize topological superconductivity with winding number $|mathcal{N}|=4$. We show that this state reflects in pronounced experimental signatures, such as distinct quantum Hall features.
Moire materials provide a highly tunable environment for the realization of band structures with engineered physical properties. Specifically, moire structures with Fermi surface flat bands - a synthetic environment for the realization of correlated
phases - have moire unit cells containing thousands of atoms and tantalizingly complex bands structures. In this paper we show that statistical principles go a long way in explaining universal physical properties of these systems. Our approach builds on three conceptual elements: the presence of quantum chaos caused by the effective irregularity of the atomic configurations on short length scales, Anderson localization in momentum space, and the presence of approximate crystalline symmetries. Which of these principles dominates depends on material parameters such as the extension of the Fermi surface or the strength of the moire lattice potential. The phenomenological consequences of this competition are predictions for the characteristic group velocity of moire bands, a primary indicator for their average flatness. In addition to these generic features, we identify structures outside the statistical context, notably almost flat bands close to the extrema of the unperturbed spectra, and the celebrated zero energy `magic angle flat bands, where the latter require exceptionally fine tuned material parameters.
The coupling between fermionic matter and gauge fields plays a fundamental role in our understanding of nature, while at the same time posing a challenging problem for theoretical modeling. In this situation, controlled information can be gained by c
ombining different complementary approaches. Here, we study a confinement transition in a system of $N_f$ flavors of interacting Dirac fermions charged under a U(1) gauge field in 2+1 dimensions. Using Quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate a lattice model that exhibits a continuous transition at zero temperature between a gapless deconfined phase, described by three-dimensional quantum electrodynamics, and a gapped confined phase, in which the system develops valence-bond-solid order. We argue that the quantum critical point is in the universality class of the QED$_3$-Gross-Neveu-XY model. We study this field theory within a $1/N_f$ expansion in fixed dimension as well as a renormalization group analysis in $4-epsilon$ space-time dimensions. The consistency between numerical and analytical results is revealed from large to intermediate flavor number.
The pseudofermion functional renormalization group (pf-FRG) has been put forward as a semi-analytical scheme that, for a given microscopic spin model, allows to discriminate whether the low-temperature states exhibit magnetic ordering or a tendency t
owards the formation of quantum spin liquids. However, the precise nature of the putative spin liquid ground state has remained hard to infer from the original (single-site) pf-FRG scheme. Here we introduce a cluster pf-FRG approach, which allows for a more stringent connection between a microscopic spin model and its low-temperature spin liquid ground states. In particular, it allows to calculate spatially structured fermion bilinear expectation values on spatial clusters, which are formed by splitting the original lattice into several sublattices, thereby allowing for the positive identification of a family of bilinear spin liquid states. As an application of this cluster pf-FRG approach, we consider the $J_1$-$J_2$ SU($N$)-Heisenberg model on a square lattice, which is a paradigmatic example for a frustrated quantum magnet exhibiting quantum spin liquid behavior for intermediate coupling strengths. In the well-established large-$N$ limit of this model, we show that our approach correctly captures the emergence of the $pi$-flux spin liquid state at low temperatures. For small $N$, where the precise nature of the ground state remains controversial, we focus on the widely studied case of $N=2$, for which we determine the low-temperature phase diagram near the strongly-frustrated regime after implementing the fermion number constraint by the flowing Popov-Fedotov method. Our results suggest that the $J_1$-$J_2$-Heisenberg model does not support the formation of a fermion bilinear spin liquid state.
We study the quantum many-body instabilities of interacting electrons with SU(2)$times$SU(2) symmetry in spin and orbital degrees of freedom on the triangular lattice near van-Hove filling. Our work is motivated by effective models for the flat bands
in hexagonal moire heterostructures like twisted bilayer boron nitride and trilayer graphene-boron nitride systems. We consider an extended Hubbard model including onsite Hubbard and Hunds couplings, as well as nearest-neighbor exchange interactions and analyze the different ordering tendencies with the help of an unbiased functional renormalization group approach. We find three classes of instabilities controlled by the filling and bare interactions. For a nested Fermi surface at van-Hove filling, Hund-like couplings induce a weak instability towards spin or orbital density wave phases. An SU(4) exchange interaction moves the system towards a Chern insulator, which is robust with respect to perturbations from Hund-like interactions or deviations from perfect nesting. Further, in an extended range of fillings and interactions, we find topological $dpm id$ and (spin-singlet)-(orbital-singlet) $f$-wave superconductivity.
Gapless Dirac fermions appear as quasiparticle excitations in various condensed-matter systems. They feature quantum critical points with critical behavior in the 2+1 dimensional Gross-Neveu universality class. The precise determination of their crit
ical exponents defines a prime benchmark for complementary theoretical approaches, such as lattice simulations, the renormalization group and the conformal bootstrap. Despite promising recent developments in each of these methods, however, no satisfactory consensus on the fermionic critical exponents has been achieved, so far. Here, we perform a comprehensive analysis of the Ising Gross-Neveu universality classes based on the recently achieved four-loop perturbative calculations. We combine the perturbative series in $4-epsilon$ spacetime dimensions with the one for the purely fermionic Gross-Neveu model in $2+epsilon$ dimensions by employing polynomial interpolation as well as two-sided Pade approximants. Further, we provide predictions for the critical exponents exploring various resummation techniques following the strategies developed for the three-dimensional scalar $O(n)$ universality classes. We give an exhaustive appraisal of the current situation of Gross-Neveu universality by comparison to other methods. For large enough number of spinor components $Ngeq 8$ as well as for the case of emergent supersymmetry $N=1$, we find our renormalization group estimates to be in excellent agreement with the conformal bootstrap, building a strong case for the validity of these values. For intermediate $N$ as well as in comparison with recent Monte Carlo results, deviations are found and critically discussed.
In frustrated magnetism, making a stringent connection between microscopic spin models and macroscopic properties of spin liquids remains an important challenge. A recent step towards this goal has been the development of the pseudofermion functional
renormalization group approach (pf-FRG) which, building on a fermionic parton construction, enables the numerical detection of the onset of spin liquid states as temperature is lowered. In this work, focusing on the SU(N) Heisenberg model at large N, we extend this approach in a way that allows us to directly enter the low-temperature spin liquid phase, and to probe its character. Our approach proceeds in momentum space, making it possible to keep the truncation minimalistic, while also avoiding the bias introduced by an explicit decoupling of the fermionic parton interactions into a given channel. We benchmark our findings against exact mean-field results in the large-N limit, and show that even without prior knowledge the pf-FRG approach identifies the correct mean-field decoupling channel. On a technical level, we introduce an alternative finite temperature regularization scheme that is necessitated to access the spin liquid ordered phase. In a companion paper arXiv:1711.02182 we present a different set of modifications of the pf-FRG scheme that allow us to study SU(N) Heisenberg models (using a real-space RG approach) for arbitrary values of N, albeit only up to the phase transition towards spin liquid physics.
We establish a scenario where fluctuations of new degrees of freedom at a quantum phase transition change the nature of a transition beyond the standard Landau-Ginzburg paradigm. To this end we study the quantum phase transition of gapless Dirac ferm
ions coupled to a $mathbb{Z}_3$ symmetric order parameter within a Gross-Neveu-Yukawa model in 2+1 dimensions, appropriate for the Kekule transition in honeycomb lattice materials. For this model the standard Landau-Ginzburg approach suggests a first order transition due to the symmetry-allowed cubic terms in the action. At zero temperature, however, quantum fluctuations of the massless Dirac fermions have to be included. We show that they reduce the putative first-order character of the transition and can even render it continuous, depending on the number of Dirac fermions $N_f$. A non-perturbative functional renormalization group approach is employed to investigate the phase transition for a wide range of fermion numbers. For the first time we obtain the critical $N_f$, where the nature of the transition changes. Furthermore, it is shown that for large $N_f$ the change from the first to second order of the transition as a function of dimension occurs exactly in the physical 2+1 dimensions. We compute the critical exponents and predict sizable corrections to scaling for $N_f =2$.
We study the impact of electron-phonon interactions on the many-body instabilities of electrons on the honeycomb lattice and their interplay with repulsive local and non-local Coulomb interactions at charge neutrality. To that end, we consider in-pla
ne optical phonon modes with wavevectors close to the $Gamma$ point as well as to the $K, -K$ points and calculate the effective phonon-mediated electron-electron interaction by integrating out the phonon modes. Ordering tendencies are studied by means of a momentum-resolved functional renormalization group approach allowing for an unbiased investigation of the appearing instabilities. In the case of an exclusive and supercritical phonon-mediated interaction, we find a Kekule and a nematic bond ordering tendency being favored over the $s$-wave superconducting state. The competition between the different phonon-induced orderings clearly shows a repulsive interaction between phonons at small and large wavevector transfers. We further discuss the influence of phonon-mediated interactions on electronically-driven instabilities induced by onsite, nearest neighbor and next-to-nearest neighbor density-density interactions. We find an extension of the parameter regime of the spin density wave order going along with an increase of the critical scales where ordering occurs, and a suppression of competing orders.
