Functional Renormalization Group for multi-orbital Fermi Surface Instabilities

Technological progress in material synthesis, as well as artificial realization of condensed matter scenarios via ultra-cold atomic gases in optical lattices or epitaxial growth of thin films, is opening the gate to investigate a plethora of unprecedented strongly correlated electron systems. In a large subclass thereof, a metallic state of layered electrons undergoes an ordering transition below some temperature into unconventional states of matter driven by electronic correlations, such as magnetism, superconductivity, or other Fermi surface instabilities. While this type of phenomena has been a well-established direction of research in condensed matter for decades, the variety of today's accessible scenarios pose fundamental new challenges to describe them. A core complication is the multi-orbital nature of the low-energy electronic structure of these systems, such as the multi-d orbital nature of electrons in iron pnictides and transition-metal oxides in general, but also electronic states of matter on lattices with multiple sites per unit cell such as the honeycomb or kagome lattice. In this review, we propagate the functional renormalization group (FRG) as a suited approach to investigate multi-orbital Fermi surface instabilities. The primary goal of the review is to describe the FRG in explicit detail and render it accessible to everyone both at a technical and intuitive level. Summarizing recent progress in the field of multi-orbital Fermi surface instabilities, we illustrate how the unbiased fashion by which the FRG treats all kinds of ordering tendencies guarantees an adequate description of electronic phase diagrams and often allows to obtain parameter trends of sufficient accuracy to make qualitative predictions for experiments. This review includes detailed and illustrative illustrations of magnetism and, in particular, superconductivity for the iron pnictides from the viewpoint of FRG. Furthermore, it discusses candidate scenarios for topological bulk singlet superconductivity and exotic particle-hole condensates on hexagonal lattices such as sodium-doped cobaltates, graphene doped to van Hove Filling, and the kagome Hubbard model. In total, the FRG promises to be one of the most versatile and revealing numerical approaches to address unconventional Fermi surface instabilities in future fields of condensed matter research.Comment: 122 pages, 57 figures; manuscript for a review in Advances in Physics - suggestions welcome

Anisotropic chiral d+id superconductivity in NaxCoO2 yH2O

Since its discovery, the superconducting phase in water-intercalated sodium cobaltates NaxCoO2 yH2O (x~0.3, y~1.3) has posed fundamental challenges in terms of experimental investigation and theoretical understanding. By a combined dynamical mean-field and renormalization group approach, we find an anisotropic chiral d+id wave state as a consequence of multi-orbital effects, Fermi surface topology, and magnetic fluctuations. It naturally explains the singlet property and close-to-nodal gap features of the superconducting phase as indicated by experiments.Comment: 4 pages plus references, 5 figure

Phase diagram of the Hubbard model on the anisotropic triangular lattice

We investigate the Hubbard model on the anisotropic triangular lattice as a suggested effective description of the Mott phase in various triangular organic compounds. Employing the variational cluster approximation and the ladder dual-fermion approach as complementary methods to adequately treat the zero-temperature and the finite-temperature domains, we obtain a consistent picture of the phase diagram as a function of anisotropy and interaction strength. The metal-insulator transition substantially depends on the anisotropy, and so does the nature of magnetism and the emergence of a nonmagnetic insulating phase. We further find that geometric anisotropy significantly influences the thermodynamics of the system. For increased frustration induced by anisotropy, the entropy of the system increases with interaction strength, opening the possibility of adiabatically cooling a frustrated system by an enhancement of electronic correlations.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figures; published versio

Unconventional superconductivity in a doped quantum spin Hall insulator

A monolayer of jacutingaite (Pt$_2$HgSe$_3$) has recently been identified as a novel quantum spin Hall insulator. By first-principles calculations, we study its Fermiology in the doped regime and unveil a type-I and type-II van Hove singularity for hole and electron doping, respectively. We find that the common link between the propensity for a topological band gap at pristine filling and unconventional superconductivity at finite doping roots in the longer ranged hybridization integrals on the honeycomb lattice. In a combined effort of random phase approximation and functional renormalization group, we find chiral $d$-wave order for the type-I and odd-parity $f$-wave order for the type-II regime.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental Materia

Accessing topological superconductivity via a combined STM and renormalization group analysis

The search for topological superconductors has recently become a key issue in condensed matter physics, because of their possible relevance to provide a platform for Majorana bound states, non-Abelian statistics, and fault-tolerant quantum computing. We propose a new scheme which links as directly as possible the experimental search to a material-based microscopic theory for topological superconductivity. For this, the analysis of scanning tunneling microscopy, which typically uses a phenomenological ansatz for the superconductor gap functions, is elevated to a theory, where a multi-orbital functional renormalization group analysis allows for an unbiased microscopic determination of the material-dependent pairing potentials. The combined approach is highlighted for paradigmatic hexagonal systems, such as doped graphene and water-intercalated sodium cobaltates, where lattice symmetry and electronic correlations yield a propensity for a chiral singlet topological superconductor state. We demonstrate that our microscopic material-oriented procedure is necessary to uniquely resolve a topological superconductor state.Comment: phenomenological STM predictions and temperature dependence of conductance as well as references added (28 pages, 8 figures

Mechanism for a Pairing State with Time-Reversal Symmetry Breaking in Iron-Based Superconductors

The multipocket Fermi surfaces of iron-based superconductors promote pairing states with both s_{+-}-wave and d_{x^2-y^2}-wave symmetry. We argue that the competition between these two order parameters could lead to a time-reversal-symmetry breaking state with s+id-pairing symmetry in the iron-based superconductors, and propose serveral scenarios in which this phase may be found. To understand the emergence of such a pairing state on a more rigorous footing, we start from a microscopic 5-orbital description representative for the pnictides. Using a combined approach of functional renormalization group and mean-field analysis, we identify the microscopic parameters of the s+id-pairing state. There, we find the most promising region for s+id-pairing in the electron doped regime with an enhanced pnictogen height