On the low energy properies of fermions with singular interactions

Abstract

We calculate the fermion Green function and particle-hole susceptibilities for a degenerate two-dimensional fermion system with a singular gauge interaction. We show that this is a strong coupling problem, with no small parameter other than the fermion spin degeneracy, N. We consider two interactions, one arising in the context of the $t-J$ model and the other in the theory of half-filled Landau level. For the fermion self energy we show in contrast to previous claims that the qualitative behavior found in the leading order of perturbation theory is preserved to all orders in the interaction. The susceptibility $χ_Q$ at a general wavevector $\bf{Q} \neq 2\bf{p_F}$ retains the fermi-liquid form. However the $2p_F$ susceptibility $χ_{2p_F}$ either diverges as $T -> 0$ or remains finite but with nonanalytic wavevector, frequency and temperature dependence. We express our results in the language of recently discussed scaling theories, give the fixed-point action, and show that at this fixed point the fermion-gauge-field interaction is marginal in $d=2$, but irrelevant at low energies in $d \ge 2$.