Landau theory of the Fermi-liquid to electron glass transition

TL;DR

This paper develops a Landau theory for the quantum phase transition from Fermi liquid to electron glass in a lattice model, showing the transition's robustness and predicting non-Fermi liquid behavior consistent with experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent replica symmetry breaking approach to describe the transition, highlighting its insensitivity to random site energies.

Findings

Transition remains unaffected by random site energies with replica symmetry breaking.

Low temperature conductivity in the glass phase follows a T^{3/2} non-Fermi liquid form.

Results align with recent experimental observations.

Abstract

A lattice model of spinless interacting electrons is used to formulate the Landau theory of the Fermi liquid to electron glass quantum phase transition. We demonstrate that the presence of additional random site energies does not affect the character of the transition, once the replica symmetry breaking is considered self-consistently at the mean-field level. Inside the glass phase, the low temperature conductivity assumes a non-Fermi liquid ~ T^{3/2} form, in agreement with recent experiments.