No Arabic abstract
Understanding electrical transport in strange metals, including the seeming universality of Planckian $T$-linear resistivity, remains a longstanding challenge in condensed matter physics. We propose that local imaging techniques, such as nitrogen vacancy center magnetometry, can locally identify signatures of quantum critical response which are invisible in measurements of a bulk electrical resistivity. As an illustrative example, we use a minimal holographic model for a strange metal in two spatial dimensions to predict how electrical current will flow in regimes dominated by quantum critical dynamics on the Planckian length scale. We describe the crossover between quantum critical transport and hydrodynamic transport (including Ohmic regimes), both in charge neutral and finite density systems. We compare our holographic predictions to experiments on charge neutral graphene, finding quantitative agreement with available data; we suggest further experiments which may determine the relevance of our framework to transport on Planckian scales in this material. More broadly, we propose that locally imaged transport be used to test the universality (or lack thereof) of microscopic dynamics in the diverse set of quantum materials exhibiting $T$-linear resistivity.
We consider 2+1 dimensional conformal gauge theories coupled to additional degrees of freedom which induce a spatially local but long-range in time $1/(tau-tau)^2$ interaction between gauge-neutral local operators. Such theories have been argued to describe the hole-doped cuprates near optimal doping. We focus on a SU(2) gauge theory with $N_h$ flavors of adjoint Higgs fields undergoing a quantum transition between Higgs and confining phases: the $1/(tau-tau)^2$ interaction arises from a spectator large Fermi surface of electrons. The large $N_h$ expansion leads to an effective action containing fields which are bilocal in time but local in space. We find a strongly-coupled fixed point at order $1/N_h$, with dynamic critical exponent $z > 1$. We show that the entropy preserves hyperscaling, but nevertheless leads to a linear in temperature specific heat with a co-efficient which has a finite enhancement near the quantum critical point.
In fermionic systems with different types of quasi-particles, attractive interactions can give rise to exotic superconducting states, as pair density wave (PDW) superconductivity and breached pairing. In the last years the search for these new types of ground states in cold atom and in metallic systems has been intense. In the case of metals the different quasi-particles may be the up and down spin bands in an external magnetic field or bands arising from distinct atomic orbitals that coexist at a common Fermi surface. These systems present a complex phase diagram as a function of the difference between the Fermi wave-vectors of the different bands. This can be controlled by external means, varying the density in the two-component cold atom system or, in a metal, by applying an external magnetic field or pressure. Here we study the zero temperature instability of the normal system as the Fermi wave-vectors mismatch of the quasi-particles (bands) is reduced and find a second order quantum phase transition to a PDW superconducting state. From the nature of the quantum critical fluctuations close to the superconducting quantum critical point (SQCP), we obtain its dynamic critical exponent. It turns out to be $z=2$ and this allows to fully characterize the SQCP for dimensions $d ge 2$.
There is a number of contradictory findings with regard to whether the theory describing easy-plane quantum antiferromagnets undergoes a second-order phase transition. The traditional Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson approach suggests a first-order phase transition, as there are two different competing order parameters. On the other hand, it is known that the theory has the property of self-duality which has been connected to the existence of a deconfined quantum critical point. The latter regime suggests that order parameters are not the elementary building blocks of the theory, but rather consist of fractionalized particles that are confined in both phases of the transition and only appear - deconfine - at the critical point. Nevertheless, numerical Monte Carlo simulations disagree with the claim of deconfined quantum criticality in the system, indicating instead a first-order phase transition. Here these contradictions are resolved by demonstrating via a duality transformation that a new critical regime exists analogous to the zero temperature limit of a certain classical statistical mechanics system. Because of this analogy, we dub this critical regime frozen. A renormalization group analysis bolsters this claim, allowing us to go beyond it and align previous numerical predictions of the first-order phase transition with the deconfined criticality in a consistent framework.
We develop a nonequilibrium increment method to compute the Renyi entanglement entropy and investigate its scaling behavior at the deconfined critical (DQC) point via large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations. To benchmark the method, we first show that at an conformally-invariant critical point of O(3) transition, the entanglement entropy exhibits universal scaling behavior of area law with logarithmic corner corrections and the obtained correction exponent represents the current central charge of the critical theory. Then we move on to the deconfined quantum critical point, where although we still observe similar scaling behavior but with a very different exponent. Namely, the corner correction exponent is found to be negative. Such a negative exponent is in sharp contrast with positivity condition of the Renyi entanglement entropy, which holds for unitary conformal field theories. Our results unambiguously reveal fundamental differences between DQC and QCPs described by unitary CFTs.
We study scaling behavior of the disorder parameter, defined as the expectation value of a symmetry transformation applied to a finite region, at the deconfined quantum critical point in (2+1)$d$ in the $J$-$Q_3$ model via large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We show that the disorder parameter for U(1) spin rotation symmetry exhibits perimeter scaling with a logarithmic correction associated with sharp corners of the region, as generally expected for a conformally-invariant critical point. However, for large rotation angle the universal coefficient of the logarithmic corner correction becomes negative, which is not allowed in any unitary conformal field theory. We also extract the current central charge from the small rotation angle scaling, whose value is much smaller than that of the free theory.