Small to large Fermi surface transition in a single band model, using randomly coupled ancillas

TL;DR

This paper introduces an exactly solvable model demonstrating a quantum phase transition from a large to a small Fermi surface in a single band system, highlighting fractionalization and pseudogap phenomena relevant to cuprate physics.

Contribution

It presents a novel solvable model of a Fermi surface transition involving fractionalization, using random interactions and large M techniques inspired by SYK models.

Findings

Identifies a first-order transition between large and small Fermi surfaces without symmetry breaking.

Shows the small Fermi surface state has fractionalized spinons and a pseudogap in spectral function.

Connects theoretical results to experimental observations in hole-doped cuprates.

Abstract

We describe a solvable model of a quantum transition in a single band model involving a change in the size of the electron Fermi surface without any symmetry breaking. In a model with electron density $1-p$, we find a 'large' Fermi surface state with the conventional Luttinger volume $1-p$ of electrons for $p>p_c$, and a first order transition to a 'small' Fermi surface state with a non-Luttinger volume $p$ of holes for $p<p_c$. As required by extended Luttinger theorems, the small Fermi surface state also has fractionalized spinon excitations. The model has electrons with strong local interactions in a single band; after a canonical transformation, the interactions are transferred to a coupling to two layers of ancilla qubits, as proposed by Zhang and Sachdev (Phys. Rev. Research ${\bf 2}$, 023172 (2020)). Solvability is achieved by employing random exchange interactions within the ancilla layers, and taking the large $M$ limit with SU($M$) spin symmetry, as in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models. The local electron spectral function of the small Fermi surface phase displays a particle-hole asymmetric pseudogap, and maps onto the spectral function of a lightly doped Kondo insulator of a Kondo-Heisenberg lattice model. We discuss connections to the physics of the hole-doped cuprates: the asymmetric pseudogap observed in STM, and the sudden change from incoherent to coherent anti-nodal spectra observed recently in photoemission. A holographic analogy to wormhole transitions between multiple black holes is briefly noted.