Abstract:
The functional renormalization group (fRG) has a long history in the qualitative exploration of correlated electron systems in condensed matter. In this work, the fRG method is improved by the implementation of an efficient parametrization of the two-particle vertex and of the multiloop extension, circumventing the standard hierarchy truncation in fRG and recovering the parquet approximation. With these developments, the response functions remain finite at all studied temperatures indicating that, in agreement with the Mermin-Wagner theorem, there is no spontaneous symmetry breaking at finite temperatures. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the self-energy and susceptibilities in the 2D Hubbard model is performed showing that it is now possible to obtain quantitatively reliable results. However, for the exact comparison between fRG and parquet in the case of a Truncated Unity momentum parametrization of the vertex, a new flow equation for the self-energy has to be introduced. Therefore, this work focuses on the self-energy which describes the effect of the interaction on the single-particle propagation. It is analysed on a diagrammatic level, how the conventional flow equation generates approximations when a finite number of form-factors in the Truncated Unity momentum parametrization is used. The new flow scheme, inspired by the exact Schwinger-Dyson relation, resolves this issue leading to excellent agreement between post-processing and flowing fRG results as well as between the fRG and the self-consistent parquet approach. Also, the comparison of the fRG results to numerically exact determinant Quantum Monte Carlo data shows a very good agreement up to moderate interaction strengths. Furthermore, it is shown that the Schwinger-Dyson inspired flow scheme is able to open a pseudogap in the 2D Hubbard model at half-filling, in contrast to the conventional flow. This property is analysed using diagrammatic arguments. In addition, long-range antiferromagnetic fluctuations are found to be responsible for this prominent feature observed in high-$T_c$ superconductors.
The improvements on fRG presented in this work represent the basis for future qualitative investigations and quantitative calculations on the 2D Hubbard model as well as other interesting model systems.