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arXiv:1408.3865 · Physical Review B

Quantum criticality in two dimensions and marginal Fermi liquid

K. B. Efetov

Published Jan 12, 2015• 16 citations
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Abstract

Kinetic properties of a two-dimensional model of fermions interacting with antiferromagnetic spin excitations near the quantum critical point are considered. The temperature or doping are assumed to be sufficiently high, such that the pseudogap does not appear. In contrast to standard spin-fermion models, it is assumed that there are intrinsic inhomogeneities in the system suppressing space correlations of the antiferromagnetic excitations. It is argued that the inhomogeneities in the spin excitations in the ``strange metal'' phase can be a consequence of the existence of ``$\ensuremath{\pi}$-shifted'' domain walls in the doped antiferromagnetic phase. Averaging over the inhomogeneities and calculating physical quantities such as resistivity and some others one can explain unusual properties of cuprates unified under the name ``marginal Fermi liquid.'' The dependence of the slope of the linear temperature dependence of the resistivity on doping is compared with experimental data.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.91.045110

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Kinetic properties of a two-dimensional model of fermions interacting with antiferromagnetic spin excitations near the quantum critical point are considered. The temperature or doping are assumed to be sufficiently high, such that the pseudogap does not appear. In contrast to standard spin-fermion models, it is assumed that there are intrinsic inhomogeneities in the system suppressing space correlations of the antiferromagnetic excitations. It is argued that the inhomogeneities in the spin excitations in the strange metal'' phase can be a consequence of the existence of \ensuremathπ\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremathπ-shifted'' domain walls in the doped antiferromagnetic phase. Averaging over the inhomogeneities and calculating physical quantities such as resistivity and some others one can explain unusual properties of cuprates unified under the name ``marginal Fermi liquid.'' The dependence of the slope of the linear temperature dependence of the resistivity on doping is compared with experimental data.
We use the Kubo response functions to calculate the electrical and thermal conductivity and Seebeck coefficient at low temperatures and frequencies in the quantum-critical region for fermions on a lattice. The theory uses scattering of the fermions with the previously derived collective fluctuations due to topological defects of the quantum XY model coupled to fermions. The microscopic model is applicable to the fluctuations of the loop-current order in cuprates as well as to a class of quasi-two-dimensional heavy-fermion and other metallic antiferromagnets, and proposed recently also for the possible loop-current order in Moiré twisted bi-layer graphene and bilayer WSe2_22​. All these metals have a linear-in-temperature electrical resistivity in the quantum-critical region of their phase diagrams, often termed ``Planckian" resistivity. The solution of the Kubo equation for transport shows that vertex renormalizations to the external fields, beside those caused by Aslamazov-Larkin (A-L) processes, are absent. A-L appears as an Umklapp scattering matrix, which gives a temperature-independent multiplicative factor for the electrical resistivity but does not affect the thermal conductivity. We also show that the mass renormalization which gives a logarithmic enhancement of the marginal Fermi-liquid specific heat does not appear in the electrical resistivity and, more remarkably, in the thermal conductivity. On the other hand the mass renormalization ∝ln⁡ωc/T\propto \ln ω_c/T∝lnωc​/T appears in the Seebeck coefficient. We also discuss in detail the conservation laws which play a crucial role in all transport properties. We calculate exactly, the numerical coefficients of the transport properties for a circular Fermi surface. The leading temperature dependences is shown to remain the same for a general Fermi surface, but it is too messy to calculate the numerical coefficient.
"Strange metals" with resistivity depending linearly on temperature T down to low T have been a long-standing puzzle in condensed matter physics. Here, we consider a lattice model of itinerant spin-[Formula: see text] fermions interacting via onsite Hubbard interaction and random infinite-ranged spin-spin interaction. We show that the quantum critical point associated with the melting of the spin-glass phase by charge fluctuations displays non-Fermi liquid behavior, with local spin dynamics identical to that of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev family of models. This extends the quantum spin liquid dynamics previously established in the large-M limit of [Formula: see text] symmetric models to models with physical [Formula: see text] spin-[Formula: see text] electrons. Remarkably, the quantum critical regime also features a Planckian linear-T resistivity associated with a T-linear scattering rate and a frequency dependence of the electronic self-energy consistent with the marginal Fermi liquid phenomenology.
We compute transport and thermodynamic properties of a two-band spin-fermion model describing itinerant fermions in two dimensions interacting via Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ antiferromagnetic quantum critical fluctuations by means of a sign-problem-free quantum Monte Carlo approach. We show that the phase diagram of this model indeed contains a ddd-wave superconducting phase at low enough temperatures. However, a crucial question that arises is whether a non-Fermi-liquid metallic regime exists above Tc{T}_{c}Tc​, exhibiting hallmark strange-metal transport phenomenology. Interestingly, we find that this version of the model describes a non-Fermi-liquid metallic regime that displays an approximately TTT-linear resistivity above Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ for a strong fermion-boson interaction. Using the Nernst-Einstein relation, our QMC results also show that this strange metal phase exhibits a crossover from being characterized by a charge compressibility given approximately by ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c}\ensuremath{\sim}1/T$ at high temperatures to being described by a charge diffusivity consistent with the scaling ${D}_{c}\ensuremath{\sim}1/T$ at low temperatures. Therefore, our paper adds support to the view that the Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ antiferromagnetic spin-fermion model at strong coupling can be considered a minimal model that describes both unconventional superconductivity and strange metallicity, which are fundamentally interconnected in many important strongly correlated quantum materials.
We present the full analysis of the normal state properties of the spin-fermion model near the antiferromagnetic instability in two dimensions. The model describes low-energy fermions interacting with their own collective spin fluctuations, which soften at the antiferromagnetic transition. We argue that in 2D, the system has two typical energies—an effective spin-fermion interaction g¯ and an energy ωsf below which the system behaves as a Fermi liquid. The ratio of the two determines the dimensionless coupling constant for spin-fermion interaction λ2 ∝ g¯/ωsf. We show that λ scales with the spin correlation length and diverges at criticality. This divergence implies that the conventional perturbative expansion breaks down. We develop a novel approach to the problem—the expansion in either the inverse number of hot spots in the Brillouin zone, or the inverse number of fermionic flavours—which allows us to explicitly account for all terms which diverge as powers of λ, and treat the remaining, O(log λ) terms in the RG formalism. We apply this technique to study the properties of the spin-fermion model in various frequency and temperature regimes. We present the results for the fermionic spectral function, spin susceptibility, optical conductivity and other observables. We compare our results in detail with the normal state data for the cuprates, and argue that the spin-fermion model is capable of explaining the anomalous normal state properties of the high T c materials. We also show that the conventional {4 theory of the quantum-critical behaviour is inapplicable in 2D due to the singularity of the {4 vertex.
The density correlations of some singular Fermi liquids with anomalous properties such as resistivity varying linearly with TTT at low temperatures and a TlogTTlogTTlogT contribution to the entropy and thermopower are expected to be quite different from that in Landau Fermi liquids. A possible statistical mechanical model for the quantum-critical fluctuations in diverse systems with such properties is the 2D dissipative quantum XY model. Exact relations between the density correlations and singular irreducible vertices due to coupling of fermions to the topological excitations of the 2D dissipative quantum XY model are used to derive results which have become measurable only recently because of advances in experimental techniques. The density correlations are unusual at all momenta q\mathbf{q}q and energy $\ensuremath{\omega}$, from the hydrodynamic limit to that for large momenta and energy. The hydrodynamic limit together with the continuity equation gives the linear in TTT resistivity. The density correlations are almost independent of frequency up to a high-frequency cutoff for ${q}_{ZB}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}q\ensuremath{\gg}\ensuremath{\omega}/{v}_{F}$; qZB{q}_{ZB}qZB​ is the Brillouin zone boundary and vF{v}_{F}vF​ is the Fermi velocity. The results should be applicable to loop-current quantum criticality in cuprates, and to 2D Fe-based compounds near their antiferromagnetic quantum criticality. The relation of the results to the temperature and frequency dependent conductivity and to Raman response is also discussed.
Metallic quantum criticality is among the central themes in the understanding of correlated electronic systems, and converging results between analytical and numerical approaches are still under review. In this work, we develop a state-of-the-art large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulation technique and systematically investigate the itinerant quantum critical point on a 2D square lattice with antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations at wavevector [Formula: see text]-a problem that resembles the Fermi surface setup and low-energy antiferromagnetic fluctuations in high-Tc cuprates and other critical metals, which might be relevant to their non-Fermi-liquid behaviors. System sizes of [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) are comfortably accessed, and the quantum critical scaling behaviors are revealed with unprecedented high precision. We found that the antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations introduce effective interactions among fermions and the fermions in return render the bare bosonic critical point into a different universality, different from both the bare Ising universality class and the Hertz-Mills-Moriya RPA prediction. At the quantum critical point, a finite anomalous dimension [Formula: see text] is observed in the bosonic propagator, and fermions at hotspots evolve into a non-Fermi liquid. In the antiferromagnetically ordered metallic phase, fermion pockets are observed as the energy gap opens up at the hotspots. These results bridge the recent theoretical and numerical developments in metallic quantum criticality and can serve as the stepping stone toward final understanding of the 2D correlated fermions interacting with gapless critical excitations.