Doping driven Small-to-Large Fermi surface transition and d-wave superconductivity in a two-dimenional Kondo lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates a two-dimensional Kondo lattice model revealing a doping-driven transition from small to large Fermi surfaces and the emergence of d-wave superconductivity, aligning with phenomena observed in cuprate superconductors.

Contribution

It introduces a mean-field and strong coupling theoretical framework to explain Fermi surface transitions and superconductivity in doped Kondo lattice systems, mirroring cuprate phase diagrams.

Findings

Fermi surface volume changes with doping due to competing orders.

Coexistence of large Fermi surface and d-wave superconductivity at intermediate doping.

Two distinct quasiparticle descriptions in strong coupling limit.

Abstract

We study the two-dimensional Kondo lattice model with an additional Heisenberg exchange between localized spins. In a first step we use mean-field theory with two order parameters. The first order parameter is a complex pairing amplitude between conduction electrons and localized spins which describes condensation of Kondo (or Zhang-Rice) singlets. A nonvanishing value implies that the localized spins contribute to the Fermi surface volume. The second order parameter describes singlet-pairing between the localized spins and competes with the Kondo-pairing order parameter. Reduction of the carrier density in the conduction band reduces the energy gain due to the formation of the large Fermi surface and induces a phase transition to a state with strong singlet correlations between the localized spins and a Fermi surface which comprises only the conduction electrons. The model thus shows a doping-driven change of its Fermi surface volume. At intermediate doping and low temperature there is a phase where both order parameters coexist, which has a gapped large Fermi surface and d-wave superconductivity. The theory thus qualitatively reproduces the phase diagram of cuprate superconductors. In the second part of the paper we show how the two phases with different Fermi surface volume emerge in a strong coupling theory applicable in limit of large Kondo exchange. The large-Fermi-surface phase corresponds to a `vacuum' of localized Kondo singlets with uniform phase and the quasiparticles are spin-1/2 charge fluctuations around this fully paired state. In the small-Fermi-surface phase the quasiparticles correspond to propagating Kondo-singlets or triplets whereby the phase of a given Kondo-singlet corresponds to its momentum. In this picture a phase transition occurs for low filling of the conduction band as well.