We study a model of strongly-correlated systems that incorporates phases such as Fermi liquids, non-Fermi liquids, and superconductivity, in addition to potential intertwined orders. The model describes Fermi surfaces of spinful electron gas or electron liquid coupled to bosons via an intermediate gauge field. Effectively, the coupling imposes constraints and interactions between the fermion spin and the local boson density. This grants the bosons the meaning as the Schwinger boson of the magnetic order and allows us to probe a larger phase space, rather than around the quantum critical point. We design the initial model so that after the boson and gauge fields are integrated out exactly, the resulting fermion-only effective theory only consists of several local interactions, allowing controlled weak-coupling interpretation for certain parameter regions. Consequently, we find a non-Fermi liquid whose degrees of freedom in the effective theory take the form of an \emph{emergent} Fermi surface that has a different Luttinger volume from the original fermions, therefore explicitly violates the Luttinger theorem. Further, this allows a $d$-wave superconducting instability if the effective interacting induced by boson coupling is in the relevant pairing channel. When the emergent Fermi surface undergoes a Lifshitz transition, the carrier type changes. In addition, we attribute the Mott insulating behavior in the strong coupling limit to the loss of emergent Fermi surface and argue the possibility of coexisting magnetic order. Our effective theory also suggests the possibility of charge density waves as a consequence of \emph{effective} strong repulsion and is independent of the Fermi-surface-nesting scenario. We discuss the possible optimal conditions for higher superconducting transition temperature and potential relevances and implications for realistic materials.
We study a model of strongly-correlated systems that incorporates phases such as Fermi liquids, non-Fermi liquids, and superconductivity, in addition to potential intertwined orders. The model describes Fermi surfaces of spinful electron gas or electron liquid coupled to bosons via an intermediate gauge field. Effectively, the coupling imposes constraints and interactions between the fermion spin and the local boson density. This grants the bosons the meaning as the Schwinger boson of the magnetic order and allows us to probe a larger phase space, rather than around the quantum critical point. We design the initial model so that after the boson and gauge fields are integrated out exactly, the resulting fermion-only effective theory only consists of several local interactions, allowing controlled weak-coupling interpretation for certain parameter regions. Consequently, we find a non-Fermi liquid whose degrees of freedom in the effective theory take the form of an \emph{emergent} Fermi surface that has a different Luttinger volume from the original fermions, therefore explicitly violates the Luttinger theorem. Further, this allows a d-wave superconducting instability if the effective interacting induced by boson coupling is in the relevant pairing channel. When the emergent Fermi surface undergoes a Lifshitz transition, the carrier type changes. In addition, we attribute the Mott insulating behavior in the strong coupling limit to the loss of emergent Fermi surface and argue the possibility of coexisting magnetic order. Our effective theory also suggests the possibility of charge density waves as a consequence of \emph{effective} strong repulsion and is independent of the Fermi-surface-nesting scenario. We discuss the possible optimal conditions for higher superconducting transition temperature and potential relevances and implications for realistic materials.
We study superfluidity in strongly correlated systems by focusing three features as follows. First, interplay between superfluidity and other order parameters near quantum critical points is studied. The onset positions of the order parameters with or without superconductivity determines how they interact with each other. For the spin density wave (SDW) transition, we find that the quantum critical point shifts by order |∆|, where ∆ is pairing amplitude, so that the region of SDW order is smaller in the superconductor than in the metal. This shift is larger than the |∆|2 shift predicted by theories of competing orders which ignore Fermi surface effects. Second, we study a doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator motivated by copper based high temperature superconductors. Based on spin and charge fractionalization, the algebraic charge liquid phase whose bosonic spinons have energy gap but fermionic holons form Fermi surfaces and its superconductivity are studied. We show fluctuations of local SDW order orientation lead to d-wave superconductivity, and its quantum critical pairing mechanisms are investigated. Also, a theory of bound states between spinons and holons is studied. We show that the fractionalization induces a doubling electron-like quasiparticles, which naturally induces the fractionalized Fermi liquid. The bound state theory describes exotic properties of the underdoped Cuprates such as “nodal-antinodal dichotomy” at a mean field level description. At last, we study superfluidity of fermions in optical lattices near the Feshbach resonance. Due to divergence of scattering length at the resonance, universality is observed and characteristics of superfluidity has been studied. We extend such universal properties by considering superfluid-insulator transition with an even integer number of fermions per unit cell. The resulting insulator interpolates between a band insulator of fermions and a Mott insulator of fermion pairs.
We present an analytic theory unraveling the microscopic mechanism of instabilities within interacting D-dimensional Fermi liquid. Our model consists of a D-dimensional electron gas subject to an instantaneous electron-electron interaction of a finite range exceeding the average interparticle distance. Pair, charge, and spin susceptibilities are evaluated via the one-loop renormalization group theory and via the bosonization approach, giving identical results. In case of a repulsive interaction, we identify an intrinsic Fermi-liquid instability towards insulating spin- and charge-density-wave order when the interaction coupling strength reaches a universal critical value. If both electron and hole pockets of the same size are present, the ground state is an excitonic insulator at arbitrarily small repulsive interaction. If the interaction is attractive, the ground state is a singlet non-BCS superconductor with a uniform condensate. In case if both electron and hole Fermi surfaces are present, we predict an instability towards the interpocket pair-density-wave ordering at the critical coupling. This prediction lends strong theoretical support to the pair-density-wave scenario of superconductivity in cuprate materials. Due to its simple and universal nature, presented microscopic mechanism of intrinsic instabilities of interacting D-dimensional Fermi liquids constitutes a solid theoretical ground for understanding quantum phase transitions in a variety of quantum materials, from ultraclean semiconductor quantum wells to high-temperature superconductors.
We present and analyze an exactly solvable interacting fermionic pairing model, which features interactions that entangle states at momenta k and −k. These interactions give rise to novel correlated ground states, leading to a rich phase diagram that includes superconducting, multiple metallic, and Mott-insulating phases. At finite interaction strengths, we observe the emergence of multiple many-body Fermi surfaces, which violate Luttinger's theorem and challenge the conventional Landau-Fermi liquid paradigm. A distinguishing feature of our model is that it remains quantum integrable, even with the addition of pairing interactions of various symmetries, setting it apart from the Hatsugai-Kohmoto model. Our results provide an analytically tractable framework for studying strong correlation effects that give rise to fractionalized excitations and unconventional superconductivity, offering valuable insights into a broad class of integrable many-body systems.
The Fermi liquid theory is a central concept in modern condensed matter physics used to describe conventional metals. A state of this universality class consists of well-defined quasiparticles, which occupy a finite number of states within a Fermi volume defined in momentum space. According to the Luttinger’s theorem, such a state encloses a Fermi volume proportional to the electron density modulo the filled bands if no symmetry is broken. In the past decades strong deviations from Fermi liquid theory have been observed in the scaling behavior of thermodynamic observables in different materials, among which are for instance cuprates and iron pnictides. This thesis is about two prototypical systems that can not be described by Fermi liquid theory. The first part of this work investigates two-dimensional effective models, which are in a Mott insulating state at half-filling and have a finite conductivity when doped with holes. In such a Mott insulating state, the charge carriers are strongly localized due to the Coulomb repulsion. Hence, strong correlations are assumed to have a strong impact on the formation of the ground state, also in the regime of small hole concentration. In a first project we have used a so-called spinon dopon mean-field theory to represent the two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model with strong on-site repulsive interaction in effective degrees of freedom, in which the holes can be embedded into a quantum spin liquid. The corresponding SU(2) invariant ground state belongs to the class of fractionalized Fermi liquids. In a second project we investigate a quantum dimer model, an effective model based on a Hilbert space spanned by short range singlets and bound states of holes and spins. The focus here is on the calculation of the hole-part of the electron spectral function by using exact diagonalization and its comparison with two analytic methods, a diagrammatic computation based on the Bethe-Salpeter equation and a so-called two-mode approximation. The electron spectral function shows a similar analytic form in momentum space between nodal and antinodal point when compared to results from photoemission spectroscopy experiments on cuprates. Furthermore, in a subsequent work we calculate the exact ground state of the quantum dimer model along a certain parameter line. In order to analyze the behavior of the elctron spectral function when increasing the density of holes, we investigate the Fermi-Hubbard model in a current project using a dynamical mean-field approach. To solve the 4-site cluster impurity problem, we use a numerical renormalization group approach. However, numerical limitations force us to restrict the analysis to spin-polarized baths. According to the spectral data, the system is similar to the SU(2) invariant case at half-filling in a Mott insulating state and posseses a momentum-selective energy gap at finite doping. The topology of the Fermi surface shows a Lifshitz transition when increasing the hole concentration. Here, the curvature of the Fermi surface changes from electron- to hole-like. For comparison we apply the dynamical mean-field theory also to the quantum dimer model and observe that the electron spectral functions at finite doping are qualitatively similar to that of the two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model. The second half of the work is about Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory, which is used to describe the low-energy effective degrees of freedom of one-dimensional systems. Here, we first discuss a conceptional extension of the operator-based bosonization theory for one-dimensional systems. This extension is especially suited for inhomogeneous one-dimensional systems. First, we investigate a one-dimensional system with a local interation potential and compute an exact solution of the single particle propagator at T = 0. The critical exponent of the single particle propagator has an unconventional form as a function of the microscopic Tomonaga-Luttinger parameters, which is not covered by the original Luttinger paradigm postulated by F. Duncan M. Haldane. In a second project on one-dimensional systems, we study the impact of scattering processes among bosonic low-energy excitations on the thermalization process. Such scattering processes are irrelevant on large length scales, however strongly affect the dynamics. In our analytic analysis we focus on a experimental setup, where a one-dimensional Bose gas is instantaneously splitted in two identical, however strongly correlated, halves of one-dimensional electronic systems. In the following, the corresponding non-equilibrium state runs through multiple regimes in time, such as a metastable prethermalization regime. However, above a certain threshold in time such scattering processes cause an effective thermalization of the system. In order to demonstrate this, we compute the kinetic equation in the Keldysh field integral formalism from a diagrammatic expansion based on a self-consistent Born approximation.
The Landau theory of phase and phase transition, which describes the state of matter by the spontaneous symmetry breaking, and the Fermi liquid theory of interacting Fermi systems are the two corner stones of contemporary condensed matter physics. They act as our starting points to understand the structure, excitations and phase transitions of any condensed matter system. According to such a Landau paradigm, an interacting Fermi system will behave just as non-interacting Fermi gas system at sufficient low energy, if the interaction is not strong enough to induce a symmetry breaking phase transition in the system. In such a case, the perturbation expansion in the interaction strength is assumed to converge and the low energy excitation can be connected to that of a Fermi gas system adiabatically. In strongly correlated electron systems, such as the high temperature superconductors and quantum antiferromagnets, a pertubative picture on the interaction effect usually fails. The correlation effect between the electrons can induce new forms of order that are beyond the Landau symmetry breaking paradigm. Non-Fermi liquid behavior can emerge in the fully symmetric correlated phases. The Mott insulating phase and the quantum spin liquid phase are the most prominent example of such exotic state of matter. After about three decades of intensive studies, people find that the quantum non-locality effect is at the heart of such new forms of order. The quantum non-locality effect manifests itself in the emergence of gauge degree of freedom in the low energy physics of such strongly correlated system. Such emergent gauge filed is not only important for the characterization and classification of the ground state structure, but is also directly responsible for the non-Fermi liquid behavior of the system. The Landau paradigm should be extended to accommodate such new forms of order and the related new form of excitations and new universal class of phase transitions. Such an extension will elevate our understanding of the structure of matter to the level of quantum wave function. Unlike the conventional symmetry breaking order, which is characterized by the correlation functions between local physical observables, the new form of orders, which are commonly called quantum order (with the topological order as one of its typical example), can be better characterized by the entanglement property in the quantum wave function. From a mathematical point of view, the new form of order is closely related to the projective representation theory of the symmetry group, while the conventional symmetry breaking order is well described by the linear representation theory of the symmetry group.
A Z2 fractionalized Fermi liquid (FL*) is a novel state of strongly correlated quantum matter. Although it is metallic, it violates Luttinger's theorem on the volume enclosed by the Fermi surface obeyed by conventional metals; this is possible due to the presence of emergent gauge excitations. The authors study here the superconducting states that can arise out of instabilities of such a topological metal. In particular, they focus on a FL* topological metal that has favorable energetics on the square lattice with nematic order, relevant to the cuprate superconductors. They find that a Higgs transition out of this FL* results in confinement of the anyonic degrees of freedom, and the resulting state is a superconductor with broken translation symmetry or time-reversal invariance. In the process, they also establish a complete mapping between bosonic and fermionic descriptions of time-reversal invariant gapped insulating Z2 spin liquid states on the rectangular lattice, which, on doping with charge carriers, can give rise to FL* phases. They also note a possible connection to the recent observation of pair density waves in the superconducting state of the underdoped cuprates.