Induction of non-Fermi liquids by critical cavity photons at the onset of superradiance

Abstract

We investigate the emergence of a non-Fermi liquid (NFL) at a putative quantum critical point signalling the onset of superradiance, in a set-up involving cavity quantum electrodynamics. Although the finiteness of the cavity, being bounded by reflecting mirrors, endows the cavity photons with an effective mass, they become massless at the continuous phase-transition point. We consider the matter part coming from the fermions hopping on a honeycomb lattice near half-filling, featuring doped Dirac cones at two sets of inequivalent valleys. This choice is dictated by the presence of a fermion–boson interaction vertex, which can give rise to Landau damping of the critical bosons, eventually leading to an NFL phase for the fermions. To set up the quantum effective action, we identify the hot-spots of the generically anisotropic (trigonally-warped) Fermi surfaces, which give the sets of points having parallel/antiparallel tangent vectors. The cavity photons act as charge density wave (CDW) order parameters, connecting pairs of hot-spots belonging to the Fermi surface of a single valley. With these ingredients, we set upon identifying NFL phases, using the tools of dimensional regularization and renormalization-group-flow equations. Our final results indicate that stable NFL phases exist in the low-energy limit, for the projections of the flows along the CDW coupling constant.