SO(5) Invariance and Effective Field Theory for High-Tc Superconductors

TL;DR

This paper develops effective field theories based on SO(5) symmetry to analyze high-Tc superconductors, providing insights into phase transitions, Goldstone bosons, and symmetry-breaking effects with model-independent predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive SO(5)-invariant effective field theory framework for high-Tc cuprates, analyzing critical behavior and Goldstone boson interactions with minimal model dependence.

Findings

Predictions for critical behavior near bicritical points

Dispersion relations of pseudo-Goldstone bosons

Response function contributions from Goldstone modes

Abstract

We set up the effective field theories which describe the SO(5)-invariant picture of the high-Tc cuprates in various regimes. We use these to get quantitative conclusions concerning the size of SO(5)-breaking effects. We consider two applications in detail: (i) the thermodynamic free energy, which describe the phase diagram and critical behaviour, and (ii) the Lagrangian governing the interactions of the pseudo-Goldstone bosons with each other and with the electron quasiparticles deep within the ordered phases. We use these effective theories to obtain predictions for the critical behaviour near the possible bicritical point and the pseudo-Goldstone boson dispersion relations, as well as some preliminary results concerning their contribution to response functions. We systematically identify which predictions are independent of the microscopic details of the underlying electron dynamics, and which depend on more model-dependent assumptions.