Pseudogap and Fermi arcs in underdoped cuprates

Abstract

The proposed loop-current order in cuprates cannot give the observed pseudogap and the Fermi-arcs because it preserves translation symmetry. A modification to a periodic arrangement of the four possible orientations of the order parameter with a large period of between about 12 to 30 lattice constants is proposed and shown in a simple and controlled calculation to give one-particle spectra with every feature as in the ARPES experiments. The results follow from (1) the currents at the boundaries of the periodic domains with similar topology as the Affleck-Marston flux phase, and (2) the mixing introduced by the boundary currents between the states near the erstwhile Fermi-surface and the ghost Fermi-surfaces which are displaced from it by mini-reciprocal vectors. The proposed idea can be ruled out or verified by high resolution diffraction or imaging experiments. It does not run afoul of the variety of different experiments consistent with the loop-current order as well as the theory of the marginal Fermi-liquid and d-wave superconductivity based on quantum-critical fluctuations of the loop current order.