Interplay between short-range correlated disorder and Coulomb interaction in nodal-line semimetals

Abstract: In nodal-line semimetals, Coulomb interactions and short-range correlated disorder are both marginal perturbations to the clean non-interacting Hamiltonian. We analyze their interplay using a weak-coupling renormalization group approach. In the clean case, the Coulomb interaction has been found to be marginally irrelevant, leading to Fermi liquid behavior. We extend the analysis to incorporate the effects of disorder. The nodal line structure gives rise to kinematical constraints similar to that for a two-dimensional Fermi surface, which plays a crucial role in the one-loop renor- malization of the disorder couplings. For a two-fold degenerate nodal loop (Weyl loop), we show that disorder flows to strong coupling along a unique fixed trajectory in the space of symmetry inequiv- alent disorder couplings. Along this fixed trajectory, all symmetry inequivalent disorder strengths become equal. For a four-fold degenerate nodal loop (Dirac loop), disorder also flows to strong coupling, however the strengths of symmetry inequivalent disorder couplings remain different. We show that feedback from disorder reverses the sign of the beta function for the Coulomb interaction, causing the Coulomb interaction to flow to strong coupling as well. However, the Coulomb interac- tion flows to strong coupling asymptotically more slowly than disorder. Extrapolating our results to strong coupling, we conjecture that at low energies nodal line semimetals should be described by a noninteracting nonlinear sigma model. We discuss the relation of our results with possible many-body localization at zero temperatures in such materials.