Smectons: Soft modes in electronic stripe phases, and their consequences for thermodynamics and transport

Abstract

The Goldstone mode due to stripe or unidirectional charge-density-wave order in electron systems is found to have the same functional form as the one in classical smectic liquid crystals. It is very similar to the Goldstone mode that results from helical magnetic order. This allows for an effective theory that provides a quasiparticle description of either stripe phases or helimagnets in the low-energy regime. The most remarkable observable consequence is an electronic relaxation rate in d=2 that is 1/τ~ T\ln T in clean systems and 1/τ~ \sqrt{T} in weakly disordered ones. The corresponding results in d=3 are 1/τ~ T^{3/2} and 1/τ~ T, respectively.

7pp, 2 figs, expanded version

References in corpus (6)

• Theory of the helical spin crystal: a candidate for the partially ordered state of MnSi
• Crystalline phases in chiral ferromagnets: Destabilization of helical order
• Fluctuating Stripes in Strongly Correlated Electron Systems and the Nematic-Smectic Quantum Phase Transition
• Theory of helimagnons in itinerant quantum systems II: Nonanalytic corrections to Fermi-liquid behavior
• Theory of Helimagnons in Itinerant Quantum Systems III: Quasiparticle Description
• Theory of Helimagnons in Itinerant Quantum Systems IV: Transport in the Weak-Disorder Regime

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Universal low-temperature tricritical point in metallic ferromagnets and ferrimagnets
• Ferromagnetic and Nematic Non-Fermi Liquids in Spin-Orbit Coupled Two-Dimensional Fermi Gases
• Ordered Phases of Itinerant Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya Magnets and Their Electronic Properties
• Generic non-Fermi-liquid behavior of the resistivity in magnets with ferromagnetic, helical, or skyrmionic order
• Electronic Liquid Crystal Phases in Strongly Correlated Systems