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arXiv:2010.10523 · Physical Review Letters

Strange Metals as Ersatz Fermi Liquids

Dominic V. Else, T. Senthil

Published Aug 17, 2021• 55 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A long-standing mystery of fundamental importance in correlated electron physics is to understand strange non-Fermi liquid metals that are seen in diverse quantum materials. A striking experimental feature of these metals is a resistivity that is linear in temperature (T). In this Letter we ask what it takes to obtain such non-Fermi liquid physics down to zero temperature in a translation invariant metal. If in addition the full frequency (ω) dependent conductivity satisfies ω/T scaling, we argue that the T-linear resistivity must come from the intrinsic physics of the low energy fixed point. Combining with earlier arguments that compressible translation invariant metals are "ersatz Fermi liquids" with an infinite number of emergent conserved quantities, we obtain powerful and practical conclusions. We show that there is necessarily a diverging susceptibility for an operator that is odd under inversion and time reversal symmetries, and has zero crystal momentum. We discuss a few other experimental consequences of our arguments, as well as potential loopholes, which necessarily imply other exotic phenomena.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.127.086601

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A long-standing mystery of fundamental importance in correlated electron physics is to understand strange non-Fermi liquid metals that are seen in diverse quantum materials. A striking experimental feature of these metals is a resistivity that is linear in temperature (T). In this Letter we ask what it takes to obtain such non-Fermi liquid physics down to zero temperature in a translation invariant metal. If in addition the full frequency (ω) dependent conductivity satisfies ω/T scaling, we argue that the T-linear resistivity must come from the intrinsic physics of the low energy fixed point. Combining with earlier arguments that compressible translation invariant metals are "ersatz Fermi liquids" with an infinite number of emergent conserved quantities, we obtain powerful and practical conclusions. We show that there is necessarily a diverging susceptibility for an operator that is odd under inversion and time reversal symmetries, and has zero crystal momentum. We discuss a few other experimental consequences of our arguments, as well as potential loopholes, which necessarily imply other exotic phenomena.
A system with charge conservation and lattice translation symmetry has a well-defined filling ν, which is a real number representing the average charge per unit cell.We show that if ν is fractional (i.e., not an integer), this imposes very strong constraints on the low-energy theory of the system and give a framework to understand such constraints in great generality, vastly generalizing the Luttinger and Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorems.The most powerful constraint comes about if ν is continuously tunable (i.e., the system is charge compressible), in which case, we show that the low-energy theory must have a very large emergent symmetry group-larger than any compact Lie group.An example is the Fermi surface of a Fermi liquid, where the charge at every point on the Fermi surface is conserved.We expect that in many, if not all, cases, even exotic non-Fermi liquids will have the same emergent symmetry group as a Fermi liquid, even though they could have very different dynamics.We call a system with this property an ersatz Fermi liquid.We show that ersatz Fermi liquids share a number of properties in common with Fermi liquids, including Luttinger's theorem (which is thus extended to a large class of non-Fermi liquids) and periodic "quantum oscillations" in the response to an applied magnetic field.We also establish versions of Luttinger's theorem for the composite Fermi liquid in quantum Hall systems and for spinon Fermi surfaces in Mott insulators.Our work makes a connection between filling constraints and the theory of symmetry-protected topological phases, in particular through the concept of "'t Hooft anomalies."
Recent progress in extremely correlated Fermi liquid theory (ECFL) and the dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) enables us to accurately compute in the $d\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ limit the resistivity of the $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model after setting $J\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$. This is also the $U=\ensuremath{\infty}$ Hubbard model. Since JJJ is set to zero, our study isolates the dynamical effects of the single occupation constraint enforced by the projection operator originally introduced by Gutzwiller. We study three densities n=.75,.8,.85n=.75,.8,.85n=.75,.8,.85 that correspond to a range between the overdoped and optimally doped Mott insulating state. We delineate four distinct regimes separated by three crossovers, which are characterized by different behaviors of the resistivity $\ensuremath{\rho}$. We find at the lowest temperature TTT a Gutzwiller correlated Fermi liquid regime with $\ensuremath{\rho}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{2}$ extending up to an effective Fermi temperature that is dramatically suppressed from the noninteracting value by the proximity to half filling, $n\ensuremath{\sim}1$. This is followed by a Gutzwiller correlated strange metal regime with $\ensuremath{\rho}\ensuremath{\propto}(T\ensuremath{-}{T}_{0})$, i.e., a linear resistivity extrapolating back to $\ensuremath{\rho}=0$ at a positive T0{T}_{0}T0​. At a higher temperature scale this crosses over into the bad metal regime with $\ensuremath{\rho}\ensuremath{\propto}(T+{T}_{1})$, i.e., a linear resistivity extrapolating back to a finite resistivity at T=0T=0T=0 and passing through the Ioffe-Regel-Mott value where the mean free path is a few lattice constants. This regime finally gives way to the high TTT metal regime, where we find $\ensuremath{\rho}\ensuremath{\propto}T$, i.e., a linear resistivity extrapolating back to zero at T=0T=0T=0. The present work emphasizes the first two, i.e., the two lowest temperature regimes, where the availability of an analytical ECFL theory is of help in identifying the changes in related variables entering the resistivity formula that accompanies the onset of linear resistivity, and the numerically exact DMFT helps to validate the results. We also examine thermodynamical variables such as the magnetic susceptibility, compressibility, heat capacity, and entropy and correlate changes in these with the change in resistivity. This exercise casts valuable light on the nature of charge and spin correlations in the Gutzwiller correlated strange metal regime, which has features in common with the physically relevant strange metal phase seen in strongly correlated matter.
A system with charge conservation and lattice translation symmetry has a well-defined filling ν, which is a real number representing the average charge per unit cell. We show that if ν is fractional (i.e., not an integer), this imposes very strong constraints on the low-energy theory of the system and give a framework to understand such constraints in great generality, vastly generalizing the Luttinger and Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorems. The most powerful constraint comes about if ν is continuously tunable (i.e., the system is charge compressible), in which case, we show that the low-energy theory must have a very large emergent symmetry group—larger than any compact Lie group. An example is the Fermi surface of a Fermi liquid, where the charge at every point on the Fermi surface is conserved. We expect that in many, if not all, cases, even exotic non-Fermi liquids will have the same emergent symmetry group as a Fermi liquid, even though they could have very different dynamics. We call a system with this property an ersatz Fermi liquid. We show that ersatz Fermi liquids share a number of properties in common with Fermi liquids, including Luttinger's theorem (which is thus extended to a large class of non-Fermi liquids) and periodic "quantum oscillations" in the response to an applied magnetic field. We also establish versions of Luttinger's theorem for the composite Fermi liquid in quantum Hall systems and for spinon Fermi surfaces in Mott insulators. Our work makes a connection between filling constraints and the theory of symmetry-protected topological phases, in particular through the concept of "'t Hooft anomalies."Received 17 August 2020Revised 22 December 2020Accepted 21 January 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.021005Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasAnomaliesFermi surfacePhysical SystemsStrongly correlated systemsTechniquesFermi liquid theoryNon-Fermi-liquid theorySymmetries in condensed matterCondensed Matter & Materials Physics
Since the mid-eighties there has been an accumulation of metallic materials whose thermodynamic and transport properties differ significantly from those predicted by Fermi liquid theory. Examples of these so-called non-Fermi liquids include the strange metal phase of high transition temperature cuprates, and heavy fermion systems near a quantum phase transition. We report on a class of non-Fermi liquids discovered using gauge/gravity duality. The low energy behavior of these non-Fermi liquids is shown to be governed by a nontrivial infrared (IR) fixed point which exhibits nonanalytic scaling behavior only in the temporal direction. Within this class we find examples whose single-particle spectral function and transport behavior resemble those of strange metals. In particular, the contribution from the Fermi surface to the conductivity is inversely proportional to the temperature. In our treatment these properties can be understood as being controlled by the scaling dimension of the fermion operator in the emergent IR fixed point.
"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.
Non-saturating high-temperature resistivity ("bad metal"), T-linear low-temperature resistivity ("strange metal"), and a crossover to activation-free growth of the resistivity in the low-temperature limit ("weak insulator") are among the most exotic behaviors widely observed in many strongly correlated materials for decades that defy the standard Fermi liquid description of solids. Here we investigate these puzzling behaviors by computing temperature-dependent optical conductivity of an emergent Bose liquid and find that it reproduces all the unexplained features of the experiments, including a featureless continuum and a well-known mid-infrared peak. Amazingly and with physically intuitive mechanisms, the corresponding doping- and temperature-dependent resistivity displays the bad metal and strange metal simultaneously and sometimes weak insulating behaviors as well. The unification of all these non-Fermi liquid behaviors in a single model suggests that a new quantum state of matter, namely the emergent Bose liquid, will guide the development of the next generation of solid state physics.