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Physics Today

Experiment Reveals a New Type of Electron System

Barbara Goss Levi

Published Jun 1, 1994• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In most metals, the electrons behave as if they were independent of one another. Although each electron really does interact with the other electrons and phonons, the net effect is felt only as a kind of molasses through which the otherwise freely moving electron must slog. Thus one an usually treat metallic systems as a low-density gas of weakly interacting particles, accounting for the average interactions simply by assigning an effective mass to the electrons. Such a model is commonly called a Fermi liquid. In one-dimensional systems, however, the Coulomb forces between the electrons intervene more strongly and produce quite a different behavior.

DOI
10.1063/1.2808518

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In most metals, the electrons behave as if they were independent of one another. Although each electron really does interact with the other electrons and phonons, the net effect is felt only as a kind of molasses through which the otherwise freely moving electron must slog. Thus one an usually treat metallic systems as a low-density gas of weakly interacting particles, accounting for the average interactions simply by assigning an effective mass to the electrons. Such a model is commonly called a Fermi liquid. In one-dimensional systems, however, the Coulomb forces between the electrons intervene more strongly and produce quite a different behavior.
It is quite beyond the purpose of this book to give a comprehensive review of the modern theory of metals. I shall touch only on those topics which are related to the mainstream of this course: the problem of strong interactions. As I have noted before, strong interactions can appear as a result of renormalization, and from the aesthetic point of view this is, perhaps, the most interesting case. As we shall see in Part IV, such renormalizations are particularly strong in one-dimensional systems, where practically any interaction leads to quite dramatic effects. Therefore a one-dimensional electron gas neither undergoes a phase transition (this is forbidden due to the low dimensionality), nor behaves like a system of free electrons. On the contrary, in higher dimensions at low temperatures a system of electrons either undergoes a phase transition (superconductivity, magnetic ordering, etc.), or behaves like a free electron gas. When temperatures as low as several degrees became experimentally available, physicists discovered that an enormous amount of experimental data on normal metals can be described by the model where one neglects electron–electron interactions. This apparent miracle was explained by Landau who demonstrated that the interaction pattern drastically simplifies close to the Fermi surface. Provided the system does not undergo a symmetry breaking phase transition, all interactions except forward scattering effectively vanish on the Fermi surface and low-lying excitations carry quantum numbers of electrons. Therefore they are called quasi-particles . The meaning of the word quasi will become clear in a moment.
Heavy fermion systems are explained on the basis of the Fermi liquid theory. The specific heat, magnetic susceptibility and electrical resistivity are discussed. Using Anderson's orthogonality theorem, we show that the Fermi liquid is nothing but a local spin singlet state at every site. Heavy fermion systems The Fermi liquid theory is independent of a model Hamiltonian, and can be applied to any system as long as the system remains a Fermi liquid. The theory tells us that even if the electron interaction becomes strong, physical quantities behave as those of the non-interacting Fermi gas. The difference between them with and without interaction is not qualitative but quantitative. As seen at the Mott transition in Hubbard systems, the effective mass of the electron increases near the transition point. As a system realizing such a large effective mass, a Fermi liquid system called the heavy electron system or the heavy fermion system attracts general interest. The heavy fermion systems are composed of the rare earth metals such as Ce and Yb, and actinide atoms such as U. The heavy fermions are nothing but the quasi-particles in the Fermi liquid theory. As a quasi-particle in a strongly correlated electron system, the heavy fermion is an important issue to be studied in the development of the Fermi liquid theory. The heavy fermion realized in f -electron systems is one of the heavy quasi-particles appearing near the Mott transition.
Non-Fermi liquid behavior In this chapter we begin the study of electronic systems that are not Landau Fermi liquids. These systems are like totalitarian societies in which the behavior of the individual is subordinated to the needs of the organization: their low-energy excitations are collective, rather than single-particle-like. A strongly collective behavior is not at all unusual in condensed matter. For example, the low energy excitations of a crystal lattice are acoustic phonons, which are collective oscillations of the atoms about their equilibrium positions. However, such examples are usually associated with a broken symmetry (translational symmetry in this case): when it comes to homogeneous electron liquids, the familiar picture of Landau's quasiparticles is so ingrained that we tend to regard any departure from it as a surprising phenomenon. Nevertheless, departures from the normal Fermi liquid pattern can and do occur in two typical scenarios: In three- and two-dimensional systems in which the electron liquid is strongly correlated , i.e., when the order of magnitude of the coulomb interaction greatly exceeds the kinetic bandwidth, In quasi-one-dimensional systems, for any strength of the interaction. A trivial example of the first scenario is offered by the three-dimensional electron liquid at very low-density. In this case the electrons form a Wigner crystal and their collective behavior arises immediately from the loss of translational symmetry. Amuch more complex example is offered by the two-dimensional electron liquid at high magnetic field. Because the kinetic energy is effectively suppressed by the magnetic field, the structure of the groundstate and the low-lying excitations is entirely controlled by the coulomb interaction.