Abstract
Unconventional metallic states which do not support well defined single-particle excitations can arise near quantum phase transitions as strong quantum fluctuations of incipient order parameters prevent electrons from forming coherent quasiparticles. Although antiferromagnetic phase transitions occur commonly in correlated metals, understanding the nature of the strange metal realized at the critical point in layered systems has been hampered by a lack of reliable theoretical methods that take into account strong quantum fluctuations. We present a non-perturbative solution to the low-energy theory for the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal in two spatial dimensions. Being a strongly coupled theory, it can still be solved reliably in the low-energy limit as quantum fluctuations are organized by a new control parameter that emerges dynamically. We predict the exact critical exponents that govern the universal scaling of physical observables at low temperatures.
Highlights
One of the cornerstones of condensed matter physics is Landau Fermi liquid theory, according to which quantum many-body states of interacting electrons are described by largely independent quasiparticles in metals [1]
Exotic metallic states beyond the quasiparticle paradigm can arise near quantum critical points, where quantum fluctuations of collective modes driven by the uncertainty principle preempt the existence of well-defined single-particle excitations [2,3,4,5]
We predict the exact critical exponents that govern the universal scaling of physical observables at low temperatures
Summary
One of the cornerstones of condensed matter physics is Landau Fermi liquid theory, according to which quantum many-body states of interacting electrons are described by largely independent quasiparticles in metals [1]. A primary theoretical goal is to understand the universal scaling behavior of the observables based on low-energy effective theories that replace Fermi liquid theory for the unconventional metals [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. The theory becomes strongly coupled at low energies, we demonstrate that a small parameter that differs from the conventional coupling emerges dynamically. This allows us to solve the strongly interacting theory reliably. We predict the exact critical exponents that govern the scaling of dynamical and thermodynamic observables
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