Abstract
We analyze a candidate theory for the strange metal near optimal hole-doping in the cuprate superconductors. The theory contains a quantum phase transition between metals with large and small Fermi surfaces of spinless fermions carrying the electromagnetic charge of the electron, but the transition does not directly involve any broken global symmetries. The two metals have emergent SU(2) and U(1) gauge fields respectively, and the transition is driven by the condensation of a real Higgs field, carrying a finite lattice momentum and an adjoint SU(2) gauge charge. This Higgs field measures the local antiferromagnetic correlations in a "rotating reference frame". We propose a global phase diagram around this Higgs transition, and describe its relationship to a variety of recent experiments on the cuprate superconductors.
Highlights
Several recent experiments[1,2,3,4] have provided strong evidence for a dramatic change in the nature of the low temperature electronic state of the hole-doped cuprate superconductors near optimal doping (x = xc)
We argue that the rich phenomenology observed in the underdoped cuprates is primarily driven by a transition between non-Fermi liquid metals with large and small Fermi surfaces which does not directly involve any broken global symmetry
Given the fundamental connection between emergent gauge fields and the size of the Fermi surface, which was established in Ref. 24 using Oshikawa’s method[25], we are naturally led to a quantum phase transition in which there is a change in the structure of the deconfined gauge excitations
Summary
All states with broken symmetry[1] observed at low temperatures and low doping are not part of the critical field theory[22,23], but are derived as low energy instabilities of the parent small Fermi surface phase. Given the fundamental connection between emergent gauge fields and the size of the Fermi surface, which was established in Ref. 24 using Oshikawa’s method[25], we are naturally led to a quantum phase transition in which there is a change in the structure of the deconfined gauge excitations. This describes a Higgs transition in a.
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