The dynamical exponent of a quantum critical itinerant ferromagnet: a Monte Carlo study


Abstract in English

We consider the effect of the coupling between 2D quantum rotors near an XY ferromagnetic quantum critical point and spins of itinerant fermions. We analyze how this coupling affects the dynamics of rotors and the self-energy of fermions.A common belief is that near a $mathbf{q}=0$ ferromagnetic transition, fermions induce an $Omega/q$ Landau damping of rotors (i.e., the dynamical critical exponent is $z=3$) and Landau overdamped rotors give rise to non-Fermi liquid fermionic self-energy $Sigmapropto omega^{2/3}$. This behavior has been confirmed in previous quantum Monte Carlo studies. Here we show that for the XY case the behavior is different. We report the results of large scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations, which clearly show that at small frequencies $z=2$ and $Sigmapropto omega^{1/2}$. We argue that the new behavior is associated with the fact that a fermionic spin is by itself not a conserved quantity due to spin-spin coupling to rotors, and a combination of self-energy and vertex corrections replaces $1/q$ in the Landau damping by a constant. We discuss the implication of these results to experiment

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