Unconventional Discontinuous Transitions in Isospin Systems (2024)

ZM Raines, LI Glazman, AV Chubukov

on arXiv

We show that two-dimensional fermions with dispersion $k^2$ or $k^4$ undergo a first-order Stoner transition to a fully spin-polarized state despite that the spin susceptibility diverges at the critical point. We extend our analysis to systems with dispersion $k^{2\alpha}$ and spin and valley isospin and show that there is a cascade of instabilities into fractional-metal states with some electron bands fully depleted; narrow intermediate ranges of partially-depleted bands exist for $\alpha\lt1$ or $\alpha\gt2$. The susceptibility becomes large near each transition. We discuss applications to biased bilayer and tri-layer graphene and moire systems.