Marginal Fermi liquid versus excitonic instability in 3D Dirac semimetals

Abstract

We study the different phases in the Quantum Electrodynamics of 3D Dirac semimetals depending on the number $N$ of Dirac fermions, using renormalization group methods and the self-consistent resolution of the Schwinger-Dyson equation. We find that, for $N<4$, a phase with dynamical generation of mass prevails at sufficiently strong coupling, sharing the same physics of the excitonic instability in 2D Dirac semimetals. For $N\ge 4$, we show that the phase diagram has instead a line of critical points characterized by the suppression of the quasiparticle weight at low energies, making the system to fall into the class of marginal Fermi liquids. Such a boundary marks the transition to a kind of strange metal which can be still defined in terms of electron quasiparticles, but with parameters that have large imaginary parts implying an increasing deviation from the conventional Fermi liquid picture.

5 pages + expanded appendix, added phase diagram

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Cited by in corpus (21)

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• Many-body effects and ultraviolet renormalization in three-dimensional Dirac materials
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• Phase diagram of the Quantum Electrodynamics of 2D and 3D Dirac semimetals
• Interacting Dirac liquid in three-dimensional semimetals
• Excitonic pairing and insulating transition in two-dimensional semi-Dirac semimetals
• Effects of the Dirac cone tilt in two-dimensional Dirac semimetal
• Correlated triple-Weyl semimetals with Coulomb interactions
• Breakdown of universality in three-dimensional Dirac semimetals with random impurities
• Direct measurement of a beta function and an indirect check of the Schwinger effect near the boundary in Dirac-Weyl semimetals
• Anomalous Gravitational TTT Vertex, Temperature Inhomogeneity, and Pressure Anisotropy
• Competition between disorder and interaction effects in 3D Weyl semimetals
• Nonlocal electrodynamics in Weyl semi-metals
• Temperature-dependent many-body effects in Dirac-Weyl materials: Interacting compressibility and quasiparticle velocity
• Robustness of the semimetal state of Na3Bi and Cd3As2 against Coulomb interaction
• Functional renormalization group approach to interacting three-dimensional Weyl semimetals
• Fate of superconductivity in disordered Dirac and semi-Dirac semimetals
• Quantum critical phenomena of the excitonic insulating transition in two dimensions
• Quantum critical scaling of gapped phases in nodal-line semimetals
• Correlated second-order Dirac semimetals with Coulomb interactions
• Shot noise in a phenomenological model of a marginal Fermi liquid