English

Anomalous Fermi liquid phase in metallic Skyrmion crystals

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2014-08-01 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Other Condensed Matter High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

In non-centrosymmetric crystals such as MnSi, magnetic order can take the form of a skyrmion crystal (SkX) . In this phase, conduction electrons coupled to the local magnetic moments acquire a Berry's phase, leading to an emergent electromagnetism. Motivated by experimental reports of a non-Fermi liquid phase in MnSi, in which resistivity is observed to scale as ΔρT3/2\Delta \rho \sim T^{3/2}, here we examine the effect of coupling phonons of an incommensurate SkX to electrons. Despite the formal similarity to a system consisting of a Fermi surface coupled to an electromagnetic field, the Berry phase fluctuations do not lead to non-Fermi liquid behavior. Instead, we propose a different mechanism in which electrons scatter off columnar fluctuation in a three-dimensional SkX. When the effects of lattice induced anisotropy are neglected, these fluctuations are ultra-soft and induce an `anomalous Fermi liquid' in which Landau quasiparticles survive but with an anomalous Δρ(T)T7/4\Delta \rho(T)\sim T^{7/4} resistivity perpendicular to the columns, and a Fermi liquid resistivity along them.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1309.7047,
  title  = {Anomalous Fermi liquid phase in metallic Skyrmion crystals},
  author = {Haruki Watanabe and S. A. Parameswaran and S. Raghu and Ashvin Vishwanath},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.7047},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

9 pages, 4 figures; v3: published version