Optical conductivity of nodal metals

Abstract

Fermi liquid theory is remarkably successful in describing the transport and optical properties of metals; at frequencies higher than the scattering rate, the optical conductivity adopts the well-known power law behavior ${\sigma }_1(\omega )\propto {\omega }^{-2}$. We have observed an unusual non-Fermi liquid response ${\sigma }_1(\omega )\propto {\omega }^{-1\pm 0.2}$ in the ground states of several cuprate and iron-based materials which undergo electronic or magnetic phase transitions resulting in dramatically reduced or nodal Fermi surfaces. The identification of an inverse (or fractional) power-law behavior in the residual optical conductivity now permits the removal of this contribution, revealing the direct transitions across the gap and allowing the nature of the electron-boson coupling to be probed. The non-Fermi liquid behavior in these systems may be the result of a common Fermi surface topology of Dirac cone-like features in the electronic dispersion.

8 pages including supplemental information

References in corpus (4)

• Temperature dependent transport in suspended graphene
• Origin of the spin density wave instability in AFe${}_2$As${}_2$ (A=Ba, Sr) as revealed by optical spectroscopy
• (pi,pi)-electronic order in iron arsenide superconductors
• Non-Drude universal scaling laws for the optical response of local Fermi liquids

Cited by in corpus (5)

• On infrared pseudogap in cuprate and pnictide high-temperature superconductors
• Optical properties of $A$Fe${}_2$As${}_2$ ($A=$Ca, Sr, and Ba) single crystals
• Unfolding optical transition weights of impurity materials for first-principles LCAO electronic structure calculations
• Transport properties of strongly correlated Fermi systems
• The fate of quasiparticles in the superconducting state