Critical fermi surfaces and non-fermi liquid metals

Abstract

At certain quantum critical points in metals an entire Fermi surface may disappear. A crucial question is the nature of the electronic excitations at the critical point. Here we provide arguments showing that at such quantum critical points the Fermi surface remains sharply defined even though the Landau quasiparticle is absent. The presence of such a critical Fermi surface has a number of consequences for the universal phenomena near the quantum critical point which are discussed. In particular the structure of scaling of the universal critical singularities can be significantly modified from more familiar criticality. Scaling hypotheses appropriate to a critical fermi surface are proposed. Implications for experiments on heavy fermion critical points are discussed. Various phenomena in the normal state of the cuprates are also examined from this perspective. We suggest that a phase transition that involves a dramatic reconstruction of the Fermi surface might underlie a number of strange observations in the metallic states above the superconducting dome.

15 pages, 7 figures; some clarificatory remarks/references added and typos fixed

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• A Non-Fermi Liquid from a Charged Black Hole; A Critical Fermi Ball
• Theory of a continuous Mott transition in two dimensions
• Competition between spin density wave order and superconductivity in the underdoped cuprates
• Divergence of the Magnetic Grüneisen Ratio at the Field-Induced Quantum Critical Point in YbRh${}_2$Si${}_2$
• Electronic structure near the 1/8-anomaly in La-based cuprates
• Strong-Coupling Phases of Frustrated Bosons on a 2-leg Ladder with Ring Exchange
• Fermi surfaces in general co-dimension and a new controlled non-trivial fixed point