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Van Hove singularities and competing instabilities in an altermagnetic metal

Peng Rao1, Johannes Knolle1,2,3, and Laura Classen1,4

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Phys. Rev. B 112, 235140 – Published 15 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zfk4-rxh1

Abstract

Van Hove (VH) singularities in the single-particle band spectrum are important for interaction-driven quantum phases. Whereas VH points are usually spin-degenerate, in newly proposed altermagnets VH singularities can become spin-dependent, due to momentum-dependent spin polarization of the Fermi surfaces arising from combined rotation and time-reversal symmetry. We consider two altermagnetic models (dx2−y2- and dxy-wave) on a square lattice with spin-polarized VH points, and study their stable fixed-point solutions indicating interaction-induced instabilities using parquet renormalization group. For both models, we find new stable fixed-point solutions of the renormalization group equations which are not connected to the solution in the spin-degenerate limit. This implies that on the square lattice, the system with VH singularities is unstable with respect to altermagnetic perturbations. The leading instability for the dx2−y2 model is real transverse spin density wave. For the dxy-wave model, it is found to be real transverse spin density wave at large altermagnetic splitting. At small altermagnetic splitting both imaginary charge density wave and real longitudinal spin density waves are dominant.

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Phys. Rev. B 112, 235140– Published 15 December, 2025
  • Received 16 July 2025
  • Accepted 26 November 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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