No Arabic abstract
A fundamental challenge to our current understanding of metals is the frequent observation of qualitative departures from Fermi liquid behavior. The standard view attributes such non-Fermi liquid phenomena to the scattering of electrons off quantum critical fluctuations of an underlying order parameter. While the possibility of non-Fermi liquid behavior isolated from the border of magnetism has long been speculated, no experimental confirmation has been made. Here we report on the observation of a strange metal region in the absence of a magnetic instability in an ultrapure single crystal. In particular, we show that the heavy fermion superconductor $beta$-YbAlB$_4$ forms a possible phase with strange metallic behavior across an extensive pressure regime, distinctly separated from a high-pressure magnetic quantum phase transition by a Fermi liquid phase.
Many unconventional superconductors exhibit a common set of anomalous charge transport properties that characterize them as `strange metals, which provides hope that there is single theory that describes them. However, model-independent connections between the strange metal and superconductivity have remained elusive. In this letter, we show that the Hall effect of the unconventional superconductor BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$ contains an anomalous contribution arising from the correlations within the strange metal. This term has a distinctive dependence on magnetic field, which allows us to track its behavior across the doping-temperature phase diagram, even under the superconducting dome. These measurements demonstrate that the strange metal Hall component emanates from a quantum critical point and, in the zero temperature limit, decays in proportion to the superconducting critical temperature. This creates a clear and novel connection between quantum criticality and superconductivity, and suggests that similar connections exist in other strange metal superconductors.
Anomalous metallic properties are often observed in the proximity of quantum critical points (QCPs), with violation of the Fermi Liquid paradigm. We propose a scenario where, due to the presence of a nearby QCP, dynamical fluctuations of the order parameter with finite correlation length mediate a nearly isotropic scattering among the quasiparticles over the entire Fermi surface. This scattering produces an anomalous metallic behavior, which is extended to the lowest temperatures by an increase of the damping of the fluctuations. We phenomenologically identify one single parameter ruling this increasing damping when the temperature decreases, accounting for both the linear-in-temperature resistivity and the seemingly divergent specific heat observed, e.g., in high-temperature superconducting cuprates and some heavy-fermion metals.
The dimerized quantum magnet BaCuSi$_2$O$_6$ was proposed as an example of dimensional reduction arising near the magnetic-field-induced quantum critical point (QCP) due to perfect geometrical frustration of its inter-bilayer interactions. We demonstrate by high-resolution neutron spectroscopy experiments that the effective intra-bilayer interactions are ferromagnetic, thereby excluding frustration. We explain the apparent dimensional reduction by establishing the presence of three magnetically inequivalent bilayers, with ratios 3:2:1, whose differing interaction parameters create an extra field-temperature scaling regime near the QCP with a non-trivial but non-universal exponent. We demonstrate by detailed quantum Monte Carlo simulations that the magnetic interaction parameters we deduce can account for all the measured properties of BaCuSi$_2$O$_6$, opening the way to a quantitative understanding of non-universal scaling in any modulated layered system.
A central mystery in high temperature superconductivity is the origin of the so-called strange metal, i.e., the anomalous conductor from which superconductivity emerges at low temperature. Measuring the dynamic charge response of the copper-oxides, $chi(q,omega)$, would directly reveal the collective properties of the strange metal, but it has never been possible to measure this quantity with meV resolution. Here, we present the first measurement of $chi(q,omega)$ for a cuprate, optimally doped Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+x}$ ($T_c=91$ K), using momentum-resolved inelastic electron scattering. In the medium energy range 0.1-2 eV relevant to the strange metal, the spectra are dominated by a featureless, temperature- and momentum-independent continuum persisting to the eV energy scale. This continuum displays a simple power law form, exhibiting $q^2$ behavior at low energy and $q^2/omega^2$ behavior at high energy. Measurements of an overdoped crystal ($T_c=50$ K) showed the emergence of a gap-like feature at low temperature, indicating deviation from power law form outside the strange metal regime. Our study suggests the strange metal exhibits a new type of charge dynamics in which excitations are local to such a degree that space and time axes are decoupled.
The Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer mechanism for superconductivity is a triumph of the theory of many-body systems. Implicit in its formulation is the existence of long-lived (quasi)particles, originating from the electronic building blocks of the materials, which interact to form Cooper pairs that move coherently in lock-step. The challenge of unconventional superconductors is that it is not only unclear what the nature of the interactions are, but whether the familiar quasi-particles that form a superconducting condensate even exist. In this work, we reveal, by the study of applied magnetic field in electronically diluted materials, that the metallic properties of the unconventional superconductor CeCoIn$_5$ are determined by the degree of quantum entanglement that (Kondo) hybridizes local and itinerant electrons. This work suggests that the properties of the strange metallic state are a reflection of the disentanglement of the many-body state into the underlying electronic building blocks of the system itself.