Theory of angle-dependent marginal Fermi liquid self-energy and its existence at all dopings in cuprates

Abstract

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, 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 results is that the computed self-energy exhibits a marginal-FL (MFL)-like frequency dependence only in the antinodal region, and FL-like behavior elsewhere at all dopings. The MFL self-energy stems from the fluctuations between the itinerant and localized densities—a result that appears when self-energy is calculated self-consistently and features an intermediate coupling behavior of cuprates. 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 MFL 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 (), 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.