Superconducting instability in non-Fermi liquids

Abstract

We use renormalization group (RG) analysis and dimensional regularization techniques to study potential superconductivity-inducing four-fermion interactions in systems with critical Fermi surfaces of general dimensions ($m$) and co-dimensions ($d-m$), arising as a result of quasiparticle interaction with a gapless Ising-nematic order parameter. These are examples of non-Fermi liquid states in $d$ spatial dimensions. Our formalism allows us to treat the corresponding zero-temperature low-energy effective theory in a controlled approximation close to the upper critical dimension $d=d_c(m)$. The fixed points are identified from the RG flow equations, as functions of $d$ and $m$. We find that the flow towards the non-Fermi liquid fixed point is preempted by Cooper pair formation for both the physical cases of $(d=3, m=2)$ and $(d=2, m=1)$. In fact, there is a strong enhancement of superconductivity by the order parameter fluctuations at the quantum critical point.