Stable non-Fermi liquid fixed point at the onset of incommensurate 2kF charge density wave order

Abstract

We consider the emergence of a non-Fermi liquid fixed point in a two-dimensional metal, at the onset of a quantum phase transition from a Fermi liquid state to an incommensurate charge density wave (CDW) ordered phase. The momentum of the CDW boson is centred at the wavevector Q, which connects a single pair of antipodal points on the Fermi surface with antiparallel tangent vectors. We employ the dimensional regularization technique in which the co-dimension of the Fermi surface is extended to a generic value, while keeping the dimension of the Fermi surface itself fixed at one. Although the system is strongly coupled at dimension d=2, the interactions become marginal at the upper critical dimension d=dc, whose value is found to be 5/2. Using a controlled perturbative expansion in the parameter ϵ=dc−d, we compute the critical exponents of the stable infrared fixed point characterizing the quantum critical point. The scalings of the original theory are determined by setting ϵ=1/2, where the fermion self-energy is seen to scale with the frequency with a fractional power law of 2/3, which is the telltale signature of a typical non-Fermi liquid phase.