Non-Fermi liquid regime of a doped Mott insulator

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-Fermi liquid behavior in a doped Mott insulator with disorder, revealing a quantum critical regime characterized by Marginal Fermi Liquid properties and deviations in single-electron responses, relevant to cuprate superconductors.

Contribution

It introduces a model showing how disorder and doping lead to a quantum critical regime with Marginal Fermi Liquid behavior, connecting theory with experimental observations in cuprates.

Findings

Identification of a low doping regime with a small quasiparticle coherent scale

Observation of Marginal Fermi Liquid behavior in physical quantities

Strong deviations from Fermi liquid theory in single-electron properties

Abstract

We study the doping of a Mott insulator in the presence of quenched frustrating disorder in the magnetic exchange. A low doping regime $\delta<J/t$ is found, in which the quasiparticle coherent scale is low : $\epsilon_F^* = J (\delta/\delta^*)^2$ with $\delta^*=J/t$ (the ratio of typical exchange to hopping). In the ``quantum critical regime'' $\epsilon_F^*<T<J$, several physical quantities display Marginal Fermi Liquid behaviour : NMR relaxation time $1/T_1\sim const.$, resistivity $\rho_{dc}(T) \propto T$, optical lifetime $\tau_{opt}^{-1}\propto \omega/\ln(\omega/\epstar)$ and response functions obey $\omega/T$ scaling, e.g. $J\sum_q \chi''(q,\omega) \propto \tanh (\omega/2T)$. In contrast, single-electron properties display stronger deviations from Fermi liquid theory in this regime with a $\sqrt{\omega}$ dependence of the inverse single-particle lifetime and a $1/\sqrt{\omega}$ decay of the photoemission intensity. On the basis of this model and of various experimental evidence, it is argued that the proximity of a quantum critical point separating a glassy Mott-Anderson insulator from a metallic ground-state is an important ingredient in the physics of the normal state of cuprate superconductors (particularly the Zn-doped materials). In this picture the corresponding quantum critical regime is a ``slushy'' state of spins and holes with slow spin and charge dynamics responsible for the anomalous properties of the normal state.