Near the antiferromagnetic quantum critical point (QCP) of electron-doped cuprate superconductors, angle-resolved photoemission experiments detect hot spots where the Fermi surface disappears. Here, we demonstrate, using the two-particle self-consistent theory, that in the antinodal region the Fermi liquid remains stable for a broad range of angles on the Fermi surface and for all dopings near the QCP. We show how the quasiparticle weight Z and effective mass m^{*} change and then abruptly become meaningless as the hot spots are approached. We propose a dimensionless number, easily accessible in ARPES experiments, that can be used to gauge the strength of correlations.
Near the antiferromagnetic quantum critical point (QCP) of electron-doped cuprate superconductors, angle-resolved photoemission experiments detect hot spots where the Fermi surface disappears. Here, we demonstrate, using the two-particle self-consistent theory, that in the antinodal region the Fermi liquid remains stable for a broad range of angles on the Fermi surface and for all dopings near the QCP. We show how the quasiparticle weight Z and effective mass m^{*} change and then abruptly become meaningless as the hot spots are approached. We propose a dimensionless number, easily accessible in ARPES experiments, that can be used to gauge the strength of correlations.
Many correlated materials display a quantum-critical point between a paramagnetic and a spin-density wave (SDW) state. The SDW wave vector connects points, so-called hot spots, on opposite sides of the Fermi surface. The Fermi velocities at these pairs of points are in general not parallel. Here, we consider the case where pairs of hot spots coalesce, and the wave vector $(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi})$ of the SDW connects hot spots with parallel Fermi velocities. Using the specific example of electron-doped cuprates, we first show that Kanamori screening and generic features of the Lindhard function make this case experimentally relevant. The temperature dependence of the correlation length, the spin susceptibility, and the self-energy at the hot spots are found using the two-particle self-consistent theory and specific numerical examples worked out for band and interaction parameters characteristic of the electron-doped cuprates. While the curvature of the Fermi surface at the hot spots leads to deviations from perfect nesting, the pseudonesting conditions lead to drastic modifications of the temperature dependence of these physical observables: Neglecting logarithmic corrections, the correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}$ scales like 1/T, namely, z=1 instead of the naive z=2, the $(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi})$ static spin susceptibility $\ensuremath{\chi}$ like 1/T, and the imaginary part of the self-energy at the hot spots like T3/2. The correction ${T}_{1}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{3/2}$ to the Korringa NMR relaxation rate is subdominant. We also consider this problem at zero temperature, or for frequencies larger than temperature, using a field-theoretical model of gapless collective bosonic modes (SDW fluctuations) interacting with fermions. The imaginary part of the retarded fermionic self-energy close to the hot spots scales as $\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{3/2}\mathrm{ln}\ensuremath{\omega}$. This is less singular than earlier predictions of the form $\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\omega}\mathrm{ln}\ensuremath{\omega}$. The difference arises from the effects of umklapp terms that were not included in previous studies.
We study the single-particle spectral properties of a model for coexisting antiferromagnetic and incommensurate charge-density-wave critical fluctuations coupled to electrons, which naturally arises in the context of the stripe-quantum-critical-point scenario for high-Tc superconducting materials. Within a perturbative approach, we show that the on-shell inverse scattering time deviates from the normal Fermi-liquid behavior near the points of the Fermi surface connected by the characteristic wave vectors of the critical fluctuations (hot spots). The anomalous behavior is stronger when the hot spots are located near singular points of the electronic spectrum. The violations to the normal Fermi-liquid behavior are associated with the transfer of spectral weight from the quasiparticle peak to incoherent shadow peaks, which produces an enhancement of incoherent spectral weight near the Fermi level. We use our results to discuss recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments on Bi2212 near optimal doping.
Antiferromagnetic fluctuations in two dimensions cause a decrease in spectral weight at so-called hot spots associated with the pseudogap in electron-doped cuprates. In the 2D Hubbard model, these hot spots occur when the Vilk criterion is satisfied, namely, when the spin correlation length exceeds the thermal de Broglie wavelength. Using the two-particle self-consistent approach, here we show that this criterion may be violated near the antiferromagnetic quantum critical point when sufficient disorder is added to the model. Static disorder decreases inelastic scattering, in contradiction with Matthiessen's rule, leading to a shift in the position of the quantum critical point and a modification of the conditions for the appearance of hot spots. This opens the road to a study of the interplay between disorder, antiferromagnetic fluctuations, and superconductivity in electron-doped cuprates.
A generalized antiferromagnetic approach to the Mott transition is analyzed with special emphasis on electron doped cuprates, where evidence for electronic phase separation is weak or absent. Fluctuations are incorporated via a self-consistent renormalization, thereby deriving a `nearly-antiferromagnetic Fermi liquid' susceptibility. The calculation is sensitive to hot-spot effects. Near optimal doping, an approximately electron-hole symmetrical Mott gap collapse is found (quantum critical points). The calculation satisfies the Mermin-Wagner theorem (Neel transition at T=0 only -- unless interlayer coupling effects are included), and the mean-field gap and transition temperature are replaced by pseudogap and onset temperature. The resulting susceptibility is used to calculate the doping dependence of the photoemission dispersion, in excellent agreement with experiment. Discussions of interlayer coupling, doping dependence of U, and extension to a three-band model are included.
We present the expression for the quasiparticle vertex function ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\omega}}({K}_{F},{P}_{F})$ (proportional to the Landau interaction function) in a 2D Fermi liquid (FL) near an instability towards antiferromagnetism. This function is relevant in many ways in the context of metallic quantum criticality. Previous studies have found that near a quantum critical point, the system enters into a regime in which the fermionic self-energy is large near hot spots on the Fermi surface [points on the Fermi surface connected by the antiferromagnetic ordering vector ${q}_{\ensuremath{\pi}}=(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi})$] and has much stronger dependence on frequency than on momentum. We show that in this regime, which we termed a critical FL, the conventional random-phase-approximation- (RPA) type approach breaks down, and to properly calculate the vertex function one has to sum up an infinite series of terms which were explicitly excluded in the conventional treatment. Besides, we show that, to properly describe the spin component of ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\omega}}({K}_{F},{P}_{F})$ even in an ordinary FL, one has to add Aslamazov-Larkin (AL) terms to the RPA vertex. We show that the total ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\omega}}({K}_{F},{P}_{F})$ is larger in a critical FL than in an ordinary FL, roughly by an extra power of magnetic correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}$, which diverges at the quantum critical point. However, the enhancement of ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\omega}}({K}_{F},{P}_{F})$ is highly nonuniform: It holds only when, for one of the two momentum variables, the distance from a hot spot along the Fermi surface is much larger than for the other one. This fact renders our case different from quantum criticality at small momentum, where the enhancement of ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\omega}}({K}_{F},{P}_{F})$ was found to be homogeneous. We show that the charge and spin components of the total vertex function satisfy the universal relations following from the Ward identities related to the conservation of the particle number and the total spin. We show that in a critical FL, the Ward identity involves ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\omega}}({K}_{F},{P}_{F})$ taken between particles on the FS. We find that the charge and spin components of ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\omega}}({K}_{F},{P}_{F})$ are identical to leading order in the magnetic correlation length. We use our results for ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}^{\ensuremath{\omega}}({K}_{F},{P}_{F})$ and for the quasiparticle residue to derive the Landau parameters Fcl=0=Fsl=0, the density of states, and the uniform (q=0) charge and spin susceptibilities ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c}^{l=0}={\ensuremath{\chi}}_{s}^{l=0}$. We show that the density of states NF diverges as $log\ensuremath{\xi}$; however, Fc,sl=0 also diverge as $log\ensuremath{\xi}$, such that the total ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c,s}^{(l=0)}\ensuremath{\propto}{N}_{F}/(1+{F}_{c}^{l=0})$ remain finite at $\ensuremath{\xi}=\ensuremath{\infty}$. We show that at weak coupling these susceptibilities are parametrically smaller than for free fermions.
We study the electronic spectral function of a metal in the vicinity of an antiferromagnetic (AFM) quantum critical point, focusing on a situation where the bare bandwidth of the spin fluctuations is significantly smaller than the Fermi energy. In this limit, we identify a range of energies where the fermionic quasiparticles near the ``hot spots'' on the Fermi surface are strongly scattered by the quantum critical fluctuations, whereas the damping of the AFM fluctuations by the electrons is negligible. Within a one-loop approximation, there is a parameter range where the T=0 spectral function at the hot spots has a ``precursor gap'' feature, with a local maximum at a finite frequency. However, we find that the ratio of the bare spin-wave velocity to the Fermi velocity required to obtain a precursor gap is smaller by about an order of magnitude than the value in the electron-doped cuprate superconductors. Hence, our results cannot easily account for the recent angle-resolved photoemission experiments in this system [He et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 116, 3449 (2019)]. At lower frequencies, the Landau damping of the AFM fluctuations becomes important, and the electronic spectral function has the familiar ${\ensuremath{\omega}}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}$ singularity. Our one-loop perturbative results are supported by a numerical Monte Carlo simulation of electrons coupled to an undamped, nearly critical AFM mode.