Motivated by the physics of spin-orbital liquids, we study a model of interacting Dirac fermions on a bilayer honeycomb lattice at half filling, featuring an explicit global SO(3)$times$U(1) symmetry. Using large-scale auxiliary- field quantum Monte
Carlo (QMC) simulations, we locate two zero-temperature phase transitions as function of increasing interaction strength. First, we observe a continuous transition from the weakly-interacting semimetal to a different semimetallic phase in which the SO(3) symmetry is spontaneously broken and where two out of three Dirac cones acquire a mass gap. The associated quantum critical point can be understood in terms of a Gross-Neveu-SO(3) theory. Second, we subsequently observe a transition towards an insulating phase in which the SO(3) symmetry is restored and the U(1) symmetry is spontaneously broken. While strongly first order at the mean-field level, the QMC data is consistent with a direct and continuous transition. It is thus a candidate for a new type of deconfined quantum critical point that features gapless fermionic degrees of freedom.
This review summarizes recent developments in the study of fermionic quantum criticality, focusing on new progress in numerical methodologies, especially quantum Monte Carlo methods, and insights that emerged from recently large-scale numerical simul
ations. Quantum critical phenomena in fermionic systems have attracted decades of extensive research efforts, partially lured by their exotic properties and potential technology applications and partially awaked by the profound and universal fundamental principles that govern these quantum critical systems. Due to the complex and non-perturbative nature, these systems belong to the most difficult and challenging problems in the study of modern condensed matter physics, and many important fundamental problems remain open. Recently, new developments in model design and algorithm improvements enabled unbiased large-scale numerical solutions to be achieved in the close vicinity of these quantum critical points, which paves a new pathway towards achieving controlled conclusions through combined efforts of theoretical and numerical studies, as well as possible theoretical guidance for experiments in heavy-fermion compounds, Cu-based and Fe-based superconductors, ultra-cold fermionic atomic gas, twisted graphene layers, etc., where signatures of fermionic quantum criticality exist.
Metallic quantum criticality is among the central theme in the understanding of correlated electronic systems, and converging results between analytical and numerical approaches are still under calling. In this work, we develop state-of-art large sca
le quantum Monte Carlo simulation technique and systematically investigate the itinerant quantum critical point on a 2D square lattice with antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations at wavevector $mathbf{Q}=(pi,pi)$ -- a problem that resembles the Fermi surface setup and low-energy antiferromagnetic fluctuations in high-Tc cuprates and other critical metals, which might be relevant to their non-Fermi-liquid behaviors. System sizes of $60times 60 times 320$ ($L times L times L_tau$) are comfortably accessed, and the quantum critical scaling behaviors are revealed with unprecedingly high precision. We found that the antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations introduce effective interactions among fermions and the fermions in return render the bare bosonic critical point into a new universality, different from both the bare Ising universality class and the Hertz-Mills-Moriya RPA prediction. At the quantum critical point, a finite anomalous dimension $etasim 0.125$ is observed in the bosonic propagator, and fermions at hot spots evolve into a non-Fermi-liquid. In the antiferromagnetically ordered metallic phase, fermion pockets are observed as energy gap opens up at the hot spots. These results bridge the recent theoretical and numerical developments in metallic quantum criticality and can be served as the stepping stone towards final understanding of the 2D correlated fermions interacting with gapless critical excitations.
One bottleneck of quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulation of strongly correlated electron systems lies at the scaling relation of computational complexity with respect to the system sizes. For generic lattice models of interacting fermions, the best met
hodology at hand still scales with $beta N^3$ where $beta$ is the inverse temperature and $N$ is the system size. Such scaling behavior has greatly hampered the accessibility of the universal infrared (IR) physics of many interesting correlated electron models at (2+1)D, let alone (3+1)D. To reduce the computational complexity, we develop a new QMC method with inhomogeneous momentum-space mesh, dubbed elective momentum ultra-size quantum Monte Carlo (EQMC) method. Instead of treating all fermionic excitations on an equal footing as in conventional QMC methods, by converting the fermion determinant into the momentum space, our method focuses on fermion modes that are directly associated with low-energy (IR) physics in the vicinity of the so-called hot-spots, while other fermion modes irrelevant for universal properties are ignored. As shown in the manuscript, for any cutoff-independent quantities, e.g. scaling exponents, this method can achieve the same level of accuracy with orders of magnitude increase in computational efficiency. We demonstrate this method with a model of antiferromagnetic itinerant quantum critical point, realized via coupling itinerant fermions with a frustrated transverse-field Ising model on a triangle lattice. The system size of $48 times 48 times 32$ ($Ltimes Ltimesbeta$, almost 3 times of previous investigations) are comfortably accessed with EQMC. With much larger system sizes, the scaling exponents are unveiled with unprecedentedly high accuracy, and this result sheds new light on the open debate about the nature and the universality class of itinerant quantum critical points.
