Degenerate Bose liquid in a fluctuating gauge field

TL;DR

This paper investigates how strong gauge field fluctuations impact a degenerate Bose liquid, leading to the destruction of superfluidity and resulting in a metallic phase with properties similar to cuprate superconductors.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effect of fluctuating gauge fields on Bose liquids and characterizes the resulting metallic phase using quantum Monte Carlo simulations.

Findings

Superfluidity is destroyed by gauge fluctuations.

The metallic phase exhibits a transport relaxation rate of about 2kT.

Density excitations resemble those of the tJ model.

Abstract

We study the effect of a strongly fluctuating gauge field on a degenerate Bose liquid, relevant to the charge degrees of freedom in doped Mott insulators. We find that the superfluidity is destroyed. The resulting metallic phase is studied using quantum Monte Carlo methods. Gauge fluctuations cause the boson world lines to retrace themselves. We examine how this world-line geometry affects the physical properties of the system. In particular, we find a transport relaxation rate of the order of 2kT, consistent with the normal state of the cuprate superconductors. We also find that the density excitations of this model resemble that of the full tJ model.