No Arabic abstract
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.
Understanding electronic properties that violate the Landau Fermi liquid paradigm in cuprate superconductors remains a major challenge in condensed matter physics. The strange metal state in overdoped cuprates that exhibits linear-in-temperature scattering rate and dc resistivity is a particularly puzzling example. Here, we compute the electronic scattering rate in the two-dimensional Hubbard model using cluster generalization of dynamical mean-field theory. We present a global phase diagram documenting an apparent non-Fermi liquid phase, in between the pseudogap and Fermi liquid phase in the doped Mott insulator regime. We discover that in this non-Fermi liquid phase, the electronic scattering rate $gamma_k(T)$ can display linear temperature dependence as temperature $T$ goes to zero. In the temperature range that we can access, the $T-$ dependent scattering rate is isotropic on the Fermi surface, in agreement with recent experiments. Using fluctuation diagnostic techniques, we identify antiferromagnetic fluctuations as the physical origin of the $T-$ linear electronic scattering rate.
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.
Superconductivity without phonons has been proposed for strongly correlated electron materials that are tuned close to a zero-temperature magnetic instability of itinerant charge carriers. Near this boundary, quantum fluctuations of magnetic degrees of freedom assume the role of phonons in conventional superconductors, creating an attractive interaction that glues electrons into superconducting pairs. Here we show that superconductivity can arise from a very different spectrum of fluctuations associated with a local or Kondo-breakdown quantum-critical point that is revealed in isotropic scattering of charge carriers and a sub-linear temperature-dependent electrical resistivity. At this critical point, accessed by applying pressure to the strongly correlated, local-moment antiferromagnet CeRhIn5, magnetic and charge fluctuations coexist and produce electronic scattering that is maximal at the optimal pressure for superconductivity. This previously unanticipated source of pairing glue opens possibilities for understanding and discovering new unconventional forms of superconductivity.
The Planckian relaxation rate $hbar/t_mathrm{P} = 2pi k_mathrm{B} T$ sets a characteristic time scale for both equilibration of quantum critical systems and maximal quantum chaos. In this note, we show that at the critical coupling between a superconducting dot and the complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, known to be maximally chaotic, the pairing gap $Delta$ behaves as $eta ,, hbar/t_mathrm{P}$ at low temperatures, where $eta$ is an order one constant. The lower critical temperature emerges with a further increase of the coupling strength so that the finite $Delta$ domain is settled between the two critical temperatures.
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.