Transverse Gauge Interactions and the Vanquished Fermi Liquid

The interaction between a Fermi liquid and transverse gauge bosons is considered within the framework of the renormalization group. It is shown from an expansion in ε0ex0ex=0ex0ex3-d, where d is the spatial dimension, that a nontrivial fixed point emerges for dimensions less than three, and that this fixed point signifies a critical Fermi system different from the conventional Landau-Fermi liquid. The dimension d0ex0ex=0ex0ex3 is the upper critical dimension where the correlation functions contain logarithmic corrections; for $d>3$, the system behaves like a Landau-Fermi liquid. Some of the consequences of this breakdown of Fermi liquid are discussed.