Abstract The mysterious metallic phase showing T-linear resistivity and a universal scattering rate 1 / τ = α P k B T / ℏ with a universal prefactor α P ∼ 1 and logarithmic-in-temperature singular specific heat coefficient, the so-called ‘Planckian metal phase’ was observed in various overdoped high- T c cuprate superconductors over a finite range in doping. Revealing the mystery of the Planckian metal state is believed to be the key to understanding the mechanism for high- T c superconductivity. Here, we propose a generic microscopic mechanism for this state based on quantum-critical local bosonic charge Kondo fluctuations coupled to both spinon and a heavy conduction-electron Fermi surface within the heavy-fermion formulation of the slave-boson t–J model. By a controlled perturbative renormalization group analysis, we examine the competition between the pseudogap phase, characterized by Anderson’s Resonating-Valence-Bond spin-liquid, and the Fermi-liquid state, modeled by the electron hopping (effective charge Kondo effect). We find a quantum-critical metallic phase with a universal Planckian ℏ ω / k B T scaling in scattering rate near an extended localized-delocalized (pseudogap-to-Fermi liquid) charge-Kondo breakdown transition. The d-wave superconducting ground state emerges near the transition. Unprecedented qualitative and quantitative agreements are reached between our theoretical predictions and various experiments, including optical conductivity, universal doping-independent field-to-temperature scaling in magnetoresistance, specific heat coefficient, marginal Fermi-liquid spectral function observed in ARPES, and Fermi surface reconstruction observed in Hall coefficients in various overdoped cuprates. Our mechanism offers a microscopic understanding of the quantum-critical Planckian metal phase observed in cuprates and its link to the pseudogap, d-wave superconducting, and Fermi liquid phases. It offers a promising route for understanding how d-wave superconductivity emerges from such a strange metal phase in cuprates–one of the long-standing open problems in condensed matter physics since 1990s–as well as shows a broader implication for the Planckian strange metal states observed in other correlated unconventional superconductors.
The mysterious metallic phase showing perfect
T-linear resistivity and a universal scattering rate
1/τ=αPkBT/ℏ with a universal prefactor
αP∼1 and logarithmic-in-temperature singular specific heat coefficient, so-called Planckian metal phase was observed in various overdoped high-
Tc cuprate superconductors over a finite range in doping. Here, we propose a microscopic mechanism for this exotic state based on quantum-critical bosonic charge Kondo fluctuations coupled to both spinon and a heavy conduction-electron Fermi surfaces within the heavy-fermion formulation of the slave-boson
t-
J model. Using a controlled perturbative renormalization group (RG) analysis, we examine the competition between the pseudogap phase, characterized by Anderson's Resonating-Valence-Bond spin-liquid, and the Fermi-liquid state, characterized by the electron hoping (effective charge Kondo effect). We find a quantum-critical metallic phase with a universal Planckian
ℏω/kBT scaling in scattering rate near a localized-delocalized (pseudogap-to-Fermi liquid) charge Kondo breakdown transition. Our results are in excellent agreement with the recent experimental observations on optical conductivity (without fine-tuning) in Nat. Commun. 14, 3033 (2023), universal doping-independent field-to-temperature scaling in magnetoresistance in Nature 595, 661 (2021), and the marginal Fermi-liquid spectral function observed in ARPES (Science 366, 1099 (2019)) as well as Hall coefficient in various overdoped cuprates in Nature 595, 661 (2021) and Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 10, 409 (2019). Our mechanism offers a microscopic understanding of the quantum-critical Planckian metal phase observed in cuprates d-wave superconducting, and Fermi liquid phases.
The authors introduce exactly solvable models of the quantum phase transition, marking the breakdown of the heavy Fermi liquid in heavy-fermion materials. The solutions capture the puzzling non-Fermi liquid transport with linear-in-temperature resistivity, as seen in experiments. Furthermore, they reveal a broad regime in which a ``Planckian'' strange metal is established, namely the quasiparticle lifetime in this regime is set only by fundamental constants and the temperature. The new large-
N approach introduced in the paper may be useful for describing a broader class of quantum critical points in systems with strong electronic correlations.
To clarify the origin of the pseudogap and strange metal states as well as their mutual relationship in cuprate superconductors, a comprehensive study on the spectral function, Fermi surface, resistivity and dynamical spin susceptivity of the Hubbard model on the square lattice has been conducted by means of the ladder dual-fermion approximation with an electron self-energy correction. It is found that the appearance of these two states requires that the characteristic hole concentration below which the Mott-Heisenberg and Slater mechanisms of electron localization occurs
pMS nearly coincides with the hole concentration where the Van Hove singularity (VHS) point is placed at the vicinity of the Fermi level. When this condition is met the VHS point is pinned at which the nesting condition of the antiferromagnetic (AFM) fluctuation is fulfilled almost everywhere on the Fermi surface in wide range of the hole concentration in a metallic state, i.e., the strange metal state. The spin fluctuation of the strange metal state is nearly quantum critical and the dynamical spin susceptivity is well described by overdamped spin wave having the
ω/T scaling with the relaxation rate at the Planckian limit. Because of these distinctive features of the strange metal state, the
k dependence of scattering rate of electrons is small and electrons behave as the marginal Fermi liquid, resulting in
T-linear resistivity. In contrast, the pseudogap state is magnetically in the renormalized classical regime and the pseudogap is formed near the X point where the nesting condition of the short-range AFM order is fulfilled.
Metallic quantum states coined strange metal (SM), with robust linear-
T resistivity, have been widely observed in many quantum materials under strong electron correlations, ranging from high-
Tc cuprate superconductors and organic superconductors to twisted multilayer graphene and
MoTe2/WSe2 superlattices. Despite decades of intensive studies, the mystery of SM still defies any sensible theoretical explanation and has been a key puzzle in modern condensed matter physics. Here, we solve a doped Mott insulator model called an Ising-Kondo lattice, which includes static spin fluctuation. With Monte Carlo simulation, the Ising-Kondo lattice unambiguously exhibits SM phenomena accompanied with quantum critical scaling in observables, e.g., resistivity, susceptibility, and specific heat. A closer look at SM reveals the breakdown of Landau's Fermi liquid theory without any symmetry breaking, i.e., the violation of Luttinger theorem. Our paper reveals that the long-overlooked static fluctuations in literature may play an essential role in non-Fermi liquid behaviors in correlated electron systems.
“Strange” metals that do not follow the predictions of Fermi liquid theory are prevalent in materials that feature superconductivity arising from electron interactions. In recent years, it has been hypothesized that spatial randomness in electron interactions must play a crucial role in strange metals for their hallmark linear-in-temperature ( T ) resistivity to survive down to low temperatures where phonon and umklapp processes are ineffective, as is observed in experiments. However, a clear picture of how this happens has not yet been provided in a realistic model free from artificial constructions, such as large- N limits and replica tricks. We study a realistic model of two-dimensional metals with spatially random antiferromagnetic interactions in a nonperturbative regime, using numerically exact high-performance, large-scale hybrid Monte Carlo simulation and exact averages over the quenched spatial randomness. Our simulations reproduce strange metals’ key experimental signature of linear-in- T resistivity with a universal “Planckian” transport scattering rate Γ tr ∼ k B T / ℏ that is independent of coupling constants. We further find that strange metallicity in these systems is not associated with a quantum critical point and, instead, arises from a phase of matter with gapless antiferromagnetic fluctuations that lacks long-range correlations and spans an extended region of parameter space: A feature that is also observed in several experiments. These gapless antiferromagnetic fluctuations take the form of spatially localized overdamped modes, whose presence could possibly be detected using recently developed nanoscale magnetometry methods. Our work paves the way for an eventual microscopic understanding of the role of spatial disorder in determining important properties of correlated-electron materials.