Renormalization group for 2D fermions with a flat Fermi surface

Abstract

We present a renormalization group analysis of two-dimensional interacting fermion systems with a closed and partially flat Fermi surface. Numerical solutions of the one-loop flow equations show that for a bare local repulsion, the system evolves through three different regimes as the typical energy is lowered: a high-energy transient with a strong competition between particle-particle and particle-hole channels, an intermediate regime with dominant spin density wave correlations, and finally a ``hot spot'' regime exhibiting d-wave superconductivity. We study, mostly by analytical methods, how this flow pattern depends on the number N of Fermi surface patches used in the numerical solution. This clearly indicates that the final regime requires vanishingly small microscopic interactions, for the one-loop approximation to be valid, as N is going to infinity.