Effect of van Hove Singularities on a Spin Liquid

Abstract

We determine the properties and leading instabilities of a spin liquid with a Fermi surface passing near a van Hove singularity. Our study is motivated by recent photoemission experiments on high $T_c$ cuprates in which it is found that for the optimally doped material the experimental Fermi surface passes near a van Hove singularity, while for underdoped materials, a pseudogap in the electron spectral function is formed in the vicinity of the van Hove point. We show theoretically that proximity to the van Hove singularity suppresses the inelastic scattering due to the gauge field and permits the formation of a d-wave RVB state in which the gap exists only near the van Hove points while finite regions of the Fermi surface remain gapless. This $d$-wave pairing provides a natural explanation of the pseudogap observed in photoemission. We also discuss the relation of the pseudogap observed in the spectral function to the pseudogaps observed in the magnetic susceptibility.

11 pages, 4 Postscript figures in a separate file

References in corpus (7)

• Theory of Underdoped Cuprates
• On the low energy properies of fermions with singular interactions
• Toward a Unified Magnetic Phase Diagram of the Cuprate Superconductors
• Antiferromagnetic and van Hove Scenarios for the Cuprates: Taking the Best of Both Worlds
• Theory of the Spin Gap in High Temperature Superconductors
• Quantum Disordered Regime and Spin Gap in the Cuprate Superconductors
• On the spin density wave transition in a two dimensional spin liquid

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of the cuprate superconductors
• A Survey of the Van Hove Scenario for High-T_c Superconductivity With Special Emphasis on Pseudogaps and Striped Phases
• On the superconductivity in the system with preformed pairs
• An SU(2) Formulation of the t-J model: Application to Underdoped Cuprates
• Kinematics of electrons near a Van Hove singularity
• Superconducting, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases in the t-t' Hubbard model
• The pseudogap in underdoped high Tc superconductors in the framework of the Boson Fermion model
• Temperature Dependence of Upper Critical Field as an Indicator of Boson Effects in Superconductivity in NdCeCuO
• Weak Coupling Phases of the Attractive $t-t^{\prime }$ Hubbard Model at the Van Hove Filling
• Charge-density-wave formation by Van Hove nesting in the α-phase of Sn/Ge(111)
• Superconducting and pseudogap phases from scaling near a Van Hove singularity
• Anisotropic Fermi surfaces and Kohn-Luttinger superconductivity in two dimensions
• Electronic instabilities of a Hubbard model approached as a large array of coupled chains: competition between d-wave superconductivity and pseudogap phase