Quantum criticality on a compressible lattice

Abstract

The stability of a quantum critical point in the $O(N)$ universality class with respect to an elastic coupling, that preserves $O(N)$ symmetry, is investigated for isotropic elasticity in the framework of the renormalization group (RG) close to the upper critical dimension $d=3-\epsilon$. With respect to the Wilson-Fisher fixed point, we find that the elastic coupling is relevant in the RG sense for $1\leq N \leq 4$, and the crystal becomes microscopically unstable, i.e., a sound velocity vanishes at a finite value of the correlation length $\xi$. For $N > 4$, an additional fixed point emerges that is located at a finite value of the dimensionless elastic coupling. This fixed point is repulsive and separates the flow to weak and strong elastic coupling. As the fixed point is approached the sound velocity is found to vanish only asymptotically as $\xi \to \infty$ such that the crystal remains microscopically stable for any finite value of $\xi$. The fixed point structure we find for the quantum problem is distinct from the classical counterpart in $d=4-\epsilon$, where the crystal always remains microscopically stable for finite $\xi$.