Kohn-Luttinger-like mechanism for unconventional charge density waves

Abstract: Interaction-induced charge orders with electronic origin occur as states of spontaneously broken symmetry in several materials platforms. An electronic mechanism for charge order requires an attractive component in the effective charge vertex. We put forward such a mechanism for the formation of unconventional charge density waves in a metal. These states result from the condensation of particle-hole pairs with finite wave vector and non-zero angular momentum and correspond to bond or loop current order on a lattice. The mechanism we describe can be viewed as Kohn Luttinger analysis in the particle-hole channel with finite transferred momentum. It incorporates one-loop spin and pairing correctionsn, which are then used as an input for a summation in the charge channel triggering an instability. We extend our analysis to a spin-fluctuation approach, where the effective charge interaction is dressed by the particle-hole ladder with exchanged momentum. We argue that this mechanism works for weakly-interacting metals with nested Fermi surface and a large number of fermion flavors. We apply the Kohn-Luttinger-like approach to square- and triangular-lattice Hubbard models with SU($N_f$) flavour symmetry and show that it leads to different types of $p$-wave charge density waves. We also study effects beyond weak coupling at and away from Van Hove filling in terms of a phenomenological model with additional exchange interaction. In the vicinity of Van Hove filling, we obtain $d$-wave charge density waves with wave vectors determined by nesting as leading instabilities. In addition, we find another charge density wave with wave vector $K/4$ on the triangular lattice on both sides of Van Hove filling. We demonstrate that this $K/4$ instability can win the competition against pairing for $N_f=4$ via an unbiased functional renormalisation group calculation.