Comment on ``Renormalization-group picture of the Lifshitz critical behavior''

H. W. Diehl, M. Shpot

Published 2003-05-07Version 1

We show that the recent renormalization-group analysis of Lifshitz critical behavior presented by Leite [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 67}, 104415 (2003)] suffers from a number of severe deficiencies. In particular, we show that his approach does not give an ultraviolet finite renormalized theory, is plagued by inconsistencies, misses the existence of a nontrivial anisotropy exponent $\theta\ne 1/2$, and therefore yields incorrect hyperscaling relations. His $\epsilon$-expansion results to order $\epsilon^2$ for the critical exponents of $m$-axial Lifshitz points are incorrect both in the anisotropic ($0<m<d$) and the isotropic cases ($m=d$). The inherent inconsistencies and the lack of a sound basis of the approach makes its results unacceptable even if they are interpreted in the sense of approximations.