No Arabic abstract
Recent experimental results: (i) the measurement of the $T ln T$ specific heat in cuprates and the earlier such results in some heavy fermion compounds, (ii) the measurement of the single-particle scattering rates, (iii) the density fluctuation spectrum in cuprates and (iv) the long standing results on the linear temperature dependence of the resistivity, show that a theory of the quantum-criticality in these compounds based on the solution of the dissipative 2D - XY model gives the temperature and frequency dependence of each of them, and the magnitudes of all four with one dimensionless coupling parameter. These low frequency or temperature dependences persist to an upper cut-off which is measured to be about the same from the singularity in the specific heat or the saturation of the single-particle self-energy. The same two parameters are deduced in the analysis of results of photoemission experiments to give d-wave superconductivity and its transition temperature. The coupling parameter and the cut-off had been estimated in the microscopic theory to within a factor of 2. The simplicity of the results depends on the discovery that orthogonal topological excitations in space and in time determine the fluctuations near criticality such that the space and time metrics are free of each other. The interacting fermions then form a marginal Fermi-liquid.
We explain recent challenging experimental observations of universal scattering rate related to the linear-temperature resistivity exhibited by a large corps of both strongly correlated Fermi systems and conventional metals. We show that the observed scattering rate in strongly correlated Fermi systems like heavy fermion metals and high-$T_c$ superconductors stems from phonon contribution that induce the linear temperature dependence of a resistivity. The above phonons are formed by the presence of flat band, resulting from the topological fermion condensation quantum phase transition (FCQPT). We emphasize that so - called Planckian limit, widely used to explain the above universal scattering rate, may occur accidentally as in conventional metals its experimental manifestations (e.g. scattering rate at room and higher temperatures) are indistinguishable from those generated by the well-know phonons being the classic lattice excitations. Our results are in good agreement with experimental data and show convincingly that the topological FCQPT can be viewed as the universal agent explaining the very unusual physics of strongly correlated Fermi systems.
A variety of strange metals exhibit resistivity that decreases linearly with temperature as $Trightarrow 0$, in contrast with conventional metals where resistivity decreases as $T^2$. This $T$-linear resistivity has been attributed to charge carriers scattering at a rate given by $hbar/tau=alpha k_{rm B} T$, where $alpha$ is a constant of order unity. This simple relationship between the scattering rate and temperature is observed across a wide variety of materials, suggesting a fundamental upper limit on scattering---the Planckian limit---but little is known about the underlying origins of this limit. Here we report a measurement of the angle-dependent magnetoresistance (ADMR) of Nd-LSCO---a hole-doped cuprate that displays $T$-linear resistivity down to the lowest measured temperatures. The ADMR unveils a well-defined Fermi surface that agrees quantitatively with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements and reveals a $T$-linear scattering rate that saturates the Planckian limit, namely $alpha = 1.2 pm 0.4$. Remarkably, we find that this Planckian scattering rate is isotropic, i.e. it is independent of direction, in contrast with expectations from hot-spot models. Our findings suggest that $T$-linear resistivity in strange metals emerges from a momentum-independent inelastic scattering rate that reaches the Planckian limit.
The most puzzling aspect of the strange metal behavior of correlated electron compounds is that the linear in temperature resistivity often extends down to low temperatures, lower than natural microscopic energy scales. We consider recently proposed deconfined critical points (or phases) in models of electrons in large dimension lattices with random nearest-neighbor exchange interactions. The criticality is in the class of Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models, and exhibits a time reparameterization soft mode representing gravity in dual holographic theories. We compute the low temperature resistivity in a large $M$ limit of models with SU($M$) spin symmetry, and find that the dominant temperature dependence arises from this soft mode. The resistivity is linear in temperature down to zero temperature at the critical point, with a co-efficient universally proportional to the product of the residual resistivity and the co-efficient of the linear in temperature specific heat. We argue that the time reparameterization soft mode offers a promising and generic mechanism for resolving the strange metal puzzle.
A theoretical understanding of the enigmatic linear-in-temperature ($T$) resistivity, ubiquitous in strongly correlated metallic systems, has been a long sought-after goal. Furthermore, the slope of this robust $T$-linear resistivity is also observed to stay constant through crossovers between different temperature regimes: a phenomenon we dub slope invariance. Recently, several solvable models with $T$-linear resistivity have been proposed, putting us in an opportune moment to compare their inner workings in various explicit calculations. We consider two strongly correlated models with local self-energies that demonstrate $T$-linearity: a lattice of coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models and the Hubbard model in single-site dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). We find that the two models achieve $T$-linearity through distinct mechanisms at intermediate temperatures. However, we also find that these mechanisms converge to an identical form at high temperatures. Surprisingly, both models exhibit slope invariance across the two temperature regimes. We thus not only reveal some of the diversity in the theoretical inner workings that can lead to $T$-linear resistivity, but we also establish that different mechanisms can result in slope invarance.
The linear-$T$ resistivity is one of the characteristic and universal properties of strange metals. There have been many progress in understanding it from holographic perspective (gauge/gravity duality). In most holographic models, the linear-$T$ resistivity is explained by the property of the infrared geometry and valid at low temperature limit. On the other hand, experimentally, the linear-$T$ resistivity is observed in a large range of temperatures, up to room temperature. By using holographic models related to the Gubser-Rocha model, we investigate how much the linear-$T$ resistivity is robust at higher temperature above the superconducting phase transition temperature. We find that strong momentum relaxation plays an important role to have a robust linear-$T$ resistivity up to high temperature.