We present a renormalization group (RG) analysis of a fermionic hot spot model of interacting electrons on the square lattice. We truncate the Fermi surface excitations to linearly dispersing quasiparticles in the vicinity of eight hot spots on the F
ermi surface, with each hot spot separated from another by the wavevector $(pi, pi)$. This motivated by the importance of these Fermi surface locations to the onset of antiferromagnetic order; however, we allow for all possible quartic interactions between the fermions, and also for all possible ordering instabilities. We compute the RG equations for our model, which depend on whether the hot spots are perfectly nested or not, and relate our results to earlier models. We also compute the RG flow of the relevant order parameters for both Hubbard and $J$, $V$ interactions, and present our results for the dominant instabilities in the nested and non-nested cases. In particular, we find that non-nested hot spots with $J$, $V$ interactions have competing singlet $d_{x^2-y^2}$ superconducting and $d$-form factor incommensurate density wave instabilities. We also investigate the enhancement of incommensurate density waves near experimentally observed wavevectors, and find dominant $d$-form factor enhancement for a range of couplings.
We examine the quantum theory of the spontaneous breaking of lattice rotation symmetry in d-wave superconductors on the square lattice. This is described by a field theory of an Ising nematic order parameter coupled to the gapless fermionic quasipart
icles. We determine the structure of the renormalization group to all orders in a 1/N_f expansion, where N_f is the number of fermion spin components. Asymptotically exact results are obtained for the quantum critical theory in which, as in the large N_f theory, the nematic order has a large anomalous dimension, and the fermion spectral functions are highly anisotropic.
High temperature superconductivity emerges in the cuprate compounds upon changing the electron density of an insulator in which the electron spins are antiferromagnetically ordered. A key characteristic of the superconductor is that electrons can be
extracted from them at zero energy only if their momenta take one of four specific values (the `nodal points). A central enigma has been the evolution of the zero energy electrons in the metallic state between the antiferromagnet and the superconductor, and recent experiments yield apparently contradictory results. The oscillation of the resistance in this metal as a function of magnetic field indicate that the zero energy electrons carry momenta which lie on elliptical `Fermi pockets, while ejection of electrons by high intensity light indicates that the zero energy electrons have momenta only along arc-like regions. We present a theory of new states of matter, which we call `algebraic charge liquids, which arise naturally between the antiferromagnet and the superconductor, and reconcile these observations. Our theory also explains a puzzling dependence of the density of superconducting electrons on the total electron density, and makes a number of unique predictions for future experiments.
