Field-induced quantum critical route to a Fermi liquid in high-temperature superconductors

Abstract

In high transition temperature (T_c) superconductivity, charge doping is a natural tuning parameter that takes copper oxides from the antiferromagnet to the superconducting region. In the metallic state above T_c the standard Landau's Fermi-liquid theory of metals as typified by the temperature squared (T^2) dependence of resistivity appears to break down. Whether the origin of the non-Fermi-liquid behavior is related to physics specific to the cuprates is a fundamental question still under debate. We uncover a new transformation from the non-Fermi- to a standard Fermi-liquid state driven not by doping but by magnetic field in the overdoped high-T_c superconductor Tl_2Ba_2CuO_{6+x}. From the c-axis resistivity measured up to 45 T, we show that the Fermi-liquid features appear above a sufficiently high field which decreases linearly with temperature and lands at a quantum critical point near the superconductivity's upper critical field -- with the Fermi-liquid coefficient of the T^2 dependence showing a power-law diverging behavior on the approach to the critical point. This field-induced quantum criticality bears a striking resemblance to that in quasi-two dimensional heavy-Fermion superconductors, suggesting a common underlying spin-related physics in these superconductors with strong electron correlations.

6 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Incoherent transport across the strange metal regime of highly overdoped cuprates
• Quantum critical scaling at the edge of Fermi liquid stability in a cuprate superconductor
• From Kondo Lattices to Kondo Superlattices
• Antiferromagnetic ordering induced by paramagnetic depairing in unconventional superconductors
• Role of the van Hove Singularity in the Quantum Criticality of the Hubbard Model
• Emergent Antiferromagnetism in D-wave Superconductor with Strong Paramagnetic Pair-Breaking
• Fermi surface evolution through a heavy fermion superconductor-to-antiferromagnet transition: de Haas-van Alphen effect in Cd-substituted CeCoIn${}_5$
• Dichotomy in the $T$-linear resistivity in hole-doped cuprates
• Quantum critical quasiparticle scattering within the superconducting state of CeCoIn5
• Quantum critical point in high-temperature superconductors
• Coexistence of d-wave superconductivity and antiferromagnetism induced by paramagnetic depairing
• Fermi liquid behaviour in weakly disordered metals close to a quantum critical point
• Conductivity of weakly disordered metals close to a "ferromagnetic" quantum critical point