No Arabic abstract
One of the most notorious non-Fermi liquid properties of both archetypal heavy-fermion systems [1-4] and the high-Tc copper oxide superconductors [5] is an electrical resistivity that evolves linearly with temperature, T. In the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn5 [5], this linear behaviour was one of the first indications of the presence of a zero-temperature instability, or quantum critical point. Here, we report the observation of a unique control parameter of T-linear scattering in CeCoIn5, found through systematic chemical substitutions of both magnetic and non-magnetic rare-earth, R, ions into the Ce sub-lattice. We find that the evolution of inelastic scattering in Ce1-xRxCoIn5 is strongly dependent on the f-electron configuration of the R ion, whereas two other key properties -- Cooper-pair breaking and Kondo-lattice coherence -- are not. Thus, T-linear resistivity in CeCoIn5 is intimately related to the nature of incoherent scattering centers in the Kondo lattice, which provides insight into the anomalous scattering rate synonymous with quantum criticality [7].
Non-Fermi liquid behavior and pseudogap formation are among the most well-known examples of exotic spectral features observed in several strongly correlated materials such as the hole-doped cuprates, nickelates, iridates, ruthenates, ferropnictides, doped Mott organics, transition metal dichalcogenides, heavy fermions, d- and f- electron metals, etc. We demonstrate that these features are inevitable consequences when fermions couple to an unconventional Bose metal [1] mean field consisting of lower-dimensional coherence. Not only do we find both exotic phenomena, but also a host of other features that have been observed e.g. in the cuprates including nodal anti-nodal dichotomy and pseudogap asymmetry(symmetry) in momentum(real) space. Obtaining these exotic and heretofore mysterious phenomena via a mean field offers a simple, universal, and therefore widely applicable explanation for their ubiquitous empirical appearance. [1] A. Hegg, J. Hou, and W. Ku, Bose metal via failed insulator: A novel phase of quantum matter, arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.06264 (2021).
We revisit the interplay between superconductivity and quantum criticality when thermal effects from virtual static bosons are included. These contributions, which arise from an effective theory compactified on the thermal circle, strongly affect field-theoretic predictions even at small temperatures. We argue that they are ubiquitous in a wide variety of models of non-Fermi liquid behavior, and generically produce a parametric suppression of superconducting instabilities. We apply these ideas to non-Fermi liquids in $d=2$ space dimensions, obtained by coupling a Fermi surface to a Landau-damped soft boson. Extending previous methods developed for $d=3-epsilon$ dimensions, we determine the dynamics and phase diagram. It features a naked quantum critical point, separated by a continuous infinite order transition from a superconducting phase with strong non-Fermi liquid corrections. We also highlight the relevance of these effects for (numerical) experiments on non-Fermi liquids.
Various angle-dependent measurements in hole-doped cuprates suggested that Non-Fermi liquid (NFL) and Fermi-liquid (FL) self-energies coexist in the Brillouin zone. Moreover, it is also found that NFL self-energies survive up to the overdoped region where the resistivity features a global FL-behavior. To address this problem, here we compute the momentum dependent self-energy from a single band Hubbard model. The self-energy is calculated self-consistently by using a momentum-dependent density-fluctuation (MRDF) method. One of our main result is that the computed self-energy exhibits a NFL-like frequency dependence only in the antinodal region, and FL-like behavior elsewhere, and retains its analytic form at all momenta and dopings. The dominant source of NFL self-energy in the antinodal region stems from the self-energy-dressed fluctuations between the itinerant and localized densities as self-consistency is invoked. We also calculate the DC conductivity by including the full momentum dependent self-energy. We find that the resistivity-temperature exponent n becomes 1 near the optimal doping, while the NFL self-energy occupies largest momentum-space volume. Surprisingly, even in the NFL state near the optimal doping, the nodal region contains FL-like self-energies; while in the under- and over-dopings (n ~ 2), the antinodal region remains NFL-like. These results highlight the non-local correlation physics in cuprates and in other similar intermediately correlated materials, where a direct link between the microscopic single-particle spectral properties and the macroscopic transport behavior can not be well established.
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.
Strong electron correlations can give rise to extraordinary properties of metals with renormalized quasiparticles which are at the basis of Landaus Fermi liquid theory. Near a quantum critical point, these quasiparticles can be destroyed and non-Fermi liquid behavior ensues. YbRh$_2$Si$_2$ is a prototypical correlated metal as it exhibits quasiparticles formation, formation of Kondo lattice coherence and quasiparticle destruction at a field-induced quantum critical point. Here we show how, upon lowering the temperature, the Kondo lattice coherence develops and finally gives way to non-Fermi liquid electronic excitations. By measuring the single-particle excitations through scanning tunneling spectroscopy down to 0.3 K, we find the Kondo lattice peak emerging below the Kondo temperature $T_{rm K} sim$ 25 K, yet this peak displays a non-trivial temperature dependence with a strong increase around 3.3 K. At the lowest temperature and as a function of an external magnetic field, the width of this peak is minimized in the quantum critical regime. Our results provide a striking demonstration of the non-Fermi liquid electronic excitations in quantum critical metals, thereby elucidating the strange-metal phenomena that have been ubiquitously observed in strongly correlated electron materials.