At the nematic quantum critical point that exists in the -wave superconducting dome of cuprates, the massless nodal fermions interact strongly with the quantum critical fluctuation of nematic order. We study this problem by means of the renormalization group approach and show that, the fermion damping rate vanishes more rapidly than the energy ω and the quasiparticle residue in the limit . The nodal fermions thus constitute an unconventional non-Fermi liquid that represents an even weaker violation of Fermi liquid theory than a marginal Fermi liquid. We also investigate the interplay of quantum nematic critical fluctuation and gauge-potential-like disorder, and find that the effective disorder strength flows to the strong coupling regime at low energies. Therefore, even an arbitrarily weak disorder can drive the system to become a disorder controlled diffusive state. Based on these theoretical results, we are able to understand a number of interesting experimental facts observed in curpate superconductors.
The extended Hubbard model describes fermions on a lattice coupled through on-site,
U, and first-neighbor,
V, interactions. In the context of high-
Tc cuprates, antiferromagnetic fluctuations may lead to an attractive channel, hence to superconductivity. Despite interest in the two-dimensional version of the model, the current knowledge about the phase diagram is still far from complete. Here, we report on the results of extensive determinant quantum Monte Carlo simulations for this model at half filling, in which we have used the average sign of the product of fermionic determinants as an additional observable to locate critical points. We arrive at a ground state phase diagram in the $U\text{\ensuremath{-}}V$ plane in which the boundaries involving antiferromagnetic, charge-ordered,
s- and
d-wave superconductivity, and phase-separated phases are quantitatively set with good accuracy. We have also proposed a partial phase diagram,
Tc(U,V), featuring critical temperatures for the charge-density wave and
s-wave superconducting phases.
Quantum critical behaviors induced by a putative quantum phase transition are vigilantly investigated, which separates a d-wave superconducting state and d-wave superconducting+X state below the superconducting dome of the d−wave superconductors with tuning the non-thermal doping variable. Within the framework of renormalization group approach, we start with a phenomenological effective theory originated from the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson theory and practice one-loop calculations to construct a set of coupled flows of all interaction parameters. After extracting related physical information from these coupled evolutions, we address that both fermion velocities and critical temperatures exhibit critical behaviors, which are robust enough against the initial conditions due to strong quantum fluctuations. At first, the evolution of Yukawa coupling between X-state order parameter and nodal fermions in tandem with quantum fluctuations heavily renormalize fermion velocities and generally drive them into certain finite anisotropic fixed point at the lowest-energy limit, whose concrete value relies upon the very quantum phase transition. In addition, these unique properties of fermion velocities largely reshape the fate of superfluid density, giving rise to either an enhancement or a dip of critical temperature. Moreover, we find that fermion-fermion interactions bring non-ignorable quantitative corrections to quantum critical behaviors despite they are subordinate to quantum fluctuations of order parameters.