Fermionic propagators for 2D systems with singular interactions

Abstract

We analyze the form of the fermionic propagator for 2D fermions interacting with massless overdamped bosons. Examples include a nematic and Ising ferromagnetic quantum-critical points, and fermions at a half-filled Landau level. Fermi liquid behavior in these systems is broken at criticality by a singular self-energy, but the Fermi surface remains well defined. These are strong-coupling problems with no expansion parameter other than the number of fermionic species, N. The two known limits, N >>1 and N=0 show qualitatively different behavior of the fermionic propagator G(\epsilon_k, \omega). In the first limit, G(\epsilon_k, \omega) has a pole at some \epsilon_k, in the other it is analytic. We analyze the crossover between the two limits. We show that the pole survives for all N, but at small N it only exists in a range O(N^2) near the mass shell. At larger distances from the mass shell, the system evolves and G(\epsilon_k, \omega) becomes regular. At N=0, the range where the pole exists collapses and G(\epsilon_k, \omega) becomes regular everywhere.