Cuprate Fermi orbits and Fermi arcs: the effect of short-range antiferromagnetic order

TL;DR

This paper investigates how short-range antiferromagnetic correlations influence the electronic structure of underdoped cuprates, explaining Fermi arcs and damping of quantum oscillations without requiring a pseudogap order.

Contribution

It demonstrates that short-range antiferromagnetic order can produce Fermi arcs and damping effects consistent with experimental observations, challenging the pseudogap hypothesis.

Findings

Fermi arcs can arise from short-range antiferromagnetic correlations.

Quantum oscillations are strongly damped due to statistical variations in Fermi surface pockets.

Simulated ARPES data closely match experimental results without invoking a pseudogap.

Abstract

We consider the effect of a short antiferromagnetic correlation length $\xi$ on the electronic bandstructure of the underdoped cuprates. Starting with a Fermi-surface topology similar to that detected in magnetic quantum-oscillation experiments, we show that a reduced $\xi$ gives an assymmetric broadening of the quasiparticle dispersion, resulting in simulated ARPES data very similar to those observed in experiment. Predicted features include the presence of `Fermi arcs' close to $a{\bf k}=(\pi/2,\pi/2)$, without the need to invoke a d-wave pseudogap order parameter. The statistical variation in the ${\bf k}$-space areas of the reconstructed Fermi surface pockets causes the quantum oscillations to be strongly damped, even in very strong magnetic fields, in agreement with experiment.