Competition of Spinon Fermi Surface and Heavy Fermi Liquids states from the Periodic Anderson to the Hubbard model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the competition between spin liquid states and heavy Fermi liquids in a correlated electron model, revealing phase transitions and spectral features relevant to recent STM experiments on 1T-TaSe2.

Contribution

It introduces a model interpolating between frustrated spin liquids and heavy metals, analyzing phase transitions using slave rotor mean-field theory and connecting results to experimental STM data.

Findings

Weak interlayer tunnelling destroys spin liquid states in both Kondo and Mott regimes.

The spinon Fermi surface transitions into a Fermi liquid near the Mott transition.

Theoretical LDOS spectra match experimental data, indicating proximity to Kondo or intermediate coupling regimes.

Abstract

We study a model of correlated electrons coupled by tunnelling to a layer of itinerant metallic electrons, which allows to interpolate from a frustrated limit favorable to spin liquid states to a Kondo-lattice limit favorable to interlayer coherent heavy metallic states. We study the competition of the spinon fermi surface state and the interlayer coherent heavy Kondo metal that appears with increasing tunnelling. Employing a slave rotor mean-field approach, we obtain a phase diagram and describe two regimes where the spin liquid state is destroyed by weak interlayer tunnelling, (i) the Kondo limit in which the correlated electrons can be viewed as localized spin moments and (ii) near the Mott metal-insulator-transition where the spinon Fermi surface transitions continuously into a Fermi liquid. We study the shape of LDOS spectra of the putative spin liquid layer in the heavy Fermi liquid phase and describe the temperature dependence of its width arising from quasiparticle interactions and disorder effects throughout this phase diagram, in an effort to understand recent STM experiments of the candidate spin liquid 1T-TaSe$_2$ residing on metallic 1H-TaSe$_2$. Comparison of the shape and temperature dependence of the theoretical and experimental LDOS suggest that this system is either close to the localized Kondo limit, or in an intermediate coupling regime where the Kondo coupling and the Heisenberg exchange interaction are comparable.