Abstract
We study the quantum phase transition between a paramagnetic and ferromagnetic metal in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling in one dimension. Using bosonization, we analyze the transition by means of renormalization group, controlled by an expansion around the upper critical dimension of two. We show that the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling allows for a new nonlinear term in the bosonized action, which generically leads to a fluctuation driven first-order transition. We further demonstrate that the Euclidean action of this system maps onto a classical smectic-A-C phase transition in a magnetic field in two dimensions. We show that the smectic transition is second order and is controlled by a new critical point.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 094419 |
| Journal | Physical Review B |
| Volume | 96 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 18 Sep 2017 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017 American Physical Society.
Funding
L.R. thanks John Toner for discussions and for letting us know that he independently derived the RG equations for the SmA-to-SmC transition in a magnetic field in unpublished work. This project was funded by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under award DE-SC0010526 (V.K. and L.F.). J.R. acknowledges a fellowship from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation under the EPiQS initiative (Grant No. GBMF4303). L.R. was supported by the Simons Investigator award from the Simons Foundation, by the NSF under Grant No. DMR-1001240C, and by the KITP under Grant No. NSF PHY-1125915. L.R. thanks the KITP for its hospitality as part of the Synthetic Matter workshop and sabbatical program, when part of this work was completed.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| National Science Foundation | DMR-1001240C |
| Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences | 1125915, 1001240 |
| Simons Foundation | |
| Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation | GBMF4303 |
| Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara | PHY-1125915 |
| Basic Energy Sciences | |
| Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering | DE-SC0010526 |