The self-consistent theory of the fermion condensation, a specific phase transition which results in a rearrangement of the single particle degrees of freedom in strongly correlated Fermi systems is developed. Beyond the phase transition point, the single particle spectra are shown to be flat. The interplay between the flattening and the damping of the single particle spectra at
T→0 is investigated. The width
γ(ε) of the single particle states is found to grow up linearly with
ε over a wide range of energy as in a marginal Fermi liquid. Our results gain insight into the success of the phenomenological theory of the normal states of high-temperature superconductors by Varma et al.
The effect of a quantum phase transition associated with the appearance of fermionic condensation in an electron liquid on the properties of superconductors is considered. It is shown that the electron system in both superconducting and normal states exhibits characteristic features of a quantum protectorate after the point of this Fermi-condensate quantum phase transition. The single-particle spectrum of a superconductor can be represented by two straight lines corresponding to two effective masses M FC * and M L *. The M FC * mass characterizes the spectrum up to the binding energy E 0 , which is of the order of the superconducting gap in magnitude, and determines the spectrum at higher binding energies. Both effective masses are retained in the normal state; however, E 0 ≃4 T. These results are used to explain some remarkable properties of high-T c superconductors and are in good agreement with recent experimental data.
Fundamentals of fermion-condensation physics are outlined. Fermion condensation is a phase transition occurring in a strongly correlated Fermi system upon a topological reconstruction of the Landau ground state and leading to the formation of a fermion condensate that possesses the dispersionless single-particle spectrum
ϵ(p)=0 in the momentum-space region adjacent to the Fermi surface and, accordingly, an anomalously enhanced density of single-particle states. A original method is developed for solving the set of nonlinear integral equations of fermion-condensation theory. This method makes it possible to analyze the problem of quantum chaos in strongly interacting multifermion systems. The computational technique used is demonstrated by applying it to superdense quark–gluon plasma, where the structure of exchange quark–quark interaction is well known. In electron systems featuring a fermion condensate, the magnitude of the gap appearing in the single-particle spectrum owing to Cooper pairing is shown to be much larger than that in Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) theory. This explains both a high superconducting-transition temperature
Tc and, with allowance for
C4 crystal-lattice symmetry, the
D -wave pairing-gap structure observed in cuprates. It is found that, in addition to the BCS gap
Δ , the spectrum of single-particle excitations of superconducting systems where a fermion condensate is present develops a nonsuperconducting gap
Υ that owes its existence to the interaction of condensate particles with normal quasiparticles residing outside the condensate region in momentum space. The question of whether these results are pertinent to the two-gap structure recently unearthed in the excitation spectrum of cuprates upon analyzing ARPES data is addressed.
A model of a Fermi liquid with the fermion condensate (FC) is applied to the consideration of quasiparticle excitations in high-temperature superconductors, in their superconducting and normal states. Within our model the appearance of the fermion condensate presents a quantum phase transition that separates the regions of normal and strongly correlated electron liquids. Beyond the phase transition point the quasiparticle system is divided into two subsystems, one containing normal quasiparticles and the other---fermion condensate localized at the Fermi surface and characterized by almost dispersionless single-particle excitations. In the superconducting state the quasiparticle dispersion in systems with FC can be presented by two straight lines, characterized by effective masses
MFC∗ and
ML∗, respectively, and intersecting near the binding energy, which is of the order of the superconducting gap. This same quasiparticle picture persists in the normal state, thus manifesting itself over a wide range of temperatures as new energy scales. Arguments are presented that fermion systems with FC have features of a ``quantum protectorate'' [R. B. Laughlin and D. Pines, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 97, 28 (2000); P. W. Anderson, cond-mat/0007185 (unpublished); cond-mat/0007287 (unpublished)].
A model of the fermion-condensation phase transition forming a plateau in the spectrum of single-particle excitations near the Fermi surface at T=0 is used to analyze those features of the spectral functions of normal states of high-T c superconductors which are inherent in a marginal Fermi liquid contaminated by impurities. With this model, such a behavior is shown to be due to the fermion condensate, which acts as an impurity subsystem because its energy spectrum at T=0 is dispersionless. The influence of the anisotropy of condensate distribution in the Brillouin zone on the spectral functions is discussed.
An effect of antiferromagnetic fluctuations on single-particle excitations is examined on the basis of an extended dynamical mean-field theory that takes account of long-range spin fluctuations onto the local self energy. We demonstrate that the single-particle spectral intensity in the two-dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling exhibits the pseudo-gap behavior near the Fermi energy due to the critical antiferromagnetic fluctuations. We also show that for the symmetric case in the Anderson lattice model, the hybridized-band gap is enlarged by the antiferromagnetic fluctuations. In both models the antiferromagnetic fluctuations suppress the double occupancy of the correlated electrons.