Self-masking of spontaneous symmetry breaking in layer materials.

We study d-wave Fermi-surface deformations (dFSD), the so-called Pomeranchuk instability, on bilayer and infinite-layer square lattices. Since the order parameter of the dFSD has Ising symmetry, there are two stacking patterns along the c axis: (+, +) and (+, -). We find that, as long as the c axis dispersion is finite at the saddle points of the in-plane band dispersion, the (+, -) stacking is usually favored independently on the details of interlayer coupling, yielding no macroscopic anisotropy. The dFSD provides unique spontaneous symmetry breaking that is self-masked in layer materials.