Nature of the quantum phase transition to a spin-nematic phase

Abstract

It is shown that the quantum phase transition in metallic non-s-wave ferromagnets, or spin nematics, is generically of first order. This is due to a coupling of the order parameter to soft electronic modes that play a role analogous to that of the electromagnetic vector potential in a superconductor, which leads to a fluctuation-induced first-order transition. A generalized mean-field theory for the p-wave case is constructed that explicitly shows this effect. Tricritical wings are predicted to appear in the phase diagram in a spatially varying magnetic field, but not in a homogeneous one.

4pp, 2 eps figs

References in corpus (9)

• How to detect fluctuating order in the high-temperature superconductors
• Fermi liquid instabilities in the spin channel
• Tricritical behavior in itinerant quantum ferromagnets
• Helicity Order: Hidden Order Parameter in URu${}_2$Si${}_2$
• Tricritical point and wing structure in the itinerant ferromagnet UGe2
• Itinerant metamagnetism induced by electronic nematic order
• Theory of helimagnons in itinerant quantum systems
• Nature of the Quantum Phase Transition in Clean, Itinerant Heisenberg Ferromagnets
• Effect of disorder on a Pomeranchuk instability

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Metallic Quantum Ferromagnets
• Quantum Order-by-Disorder in Strongly Correlated Metals
• Ferromagnetic Quantum Critical Point in Non-Centrosymmetric Systems
• Effective Soft-Mode Theory of Strongly Interacting Fermions
• A theory of criticality for quantum ferroelectric metals
• Nonanalyticities in a Strongly Correlated Fermi Liquid: Corrections to Scaling at the Fermi-Liquid Fixed Point
• The quantum ferromagnetic transition in a clean Kondo lattice is discontinuous
• Magnetic Quantum Phase Transitions in a Clean Dirac Metal
• Poisson-Dirichlet distributions and weakly first-order spin-nematic phase transitions
• Electronic spin-triplet nematic with a twist