Theory of a continuous stripe melting transition in a two dimensional metal: Possible application to cuprates

TL;DR

This paper presents a theory for continuous stripe melting quantum phase transitions in two-dimensional metals, explaining Fermi surface reconstruction and stripe fluctuations, with potential relevance to cuprate superconductors.

Contribution

It introduces a non-Landau quantum critical point model where stripe order is destroyed by proliferating dislocations, decoupling stripe fluctuations from the Fermi surface.

Findings

Decoupling of stripe fluctuations from Fermi surface dynamics.

Explanation of experimental stripe fluctuation observations in cuprates.

Identification of a non-Landau quantum critical point in a metallic system.

Abstract

We develop a concrete theory of continuous stripe melting quantum phase transitions in two dimensional metals and the associated Fermi surface reconstruction. Such phase transitions are strongly coupled but yet theoretically tractable in situations where the stripe ordering is destroyed by proliferating doubled dislocations of the charge stripe order. The resulting non-Landau quantum critical point (QCP) has strong stripe fluctuations which we show decouple dynamically from the Fermi surface even though static stripe ordering reconstructs the Fermi surface. We discuss connections to various stripe phenomena in the cuprates. We point out several puzzling aspects of old experimental results (Aeppli et al, Science 1997) on singular stripe fluctuations in the cuprates, and provide a possible explanation within our theory. These results may thus have been the first observation of non-Landau quantum criticality in an experiment.