English

Hyperscaling at the spin density wave quantum critical point in two dimensional metals

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2015-10-07 v2 Quantum Gases High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

The hyperscaling property implies that spatially isotropic critical quantum states in dd spatial dimensions have a specific heat which scales with temperature as Td/zT^{d/z}, and an optical conductivity which scales with frequency as ω(d2)/z\omega^{(d-2)/z} for ωT\omega \gg T, where zz is the dynamic critical exponent. We examine the spin-density-wave critical fixed point of metals in d=2d=2 found by Sur and Lee (Phys. Rev. B 91, 125136 (2015)) in an expansion in ϵ=3d\epsilon = 3-d. We find that the contributions of the "hot spots" on the Fermi surface to the optical conductivity and specific heat obey hyperscaling (up to logarithms), and agree with the results of the large NN analysis of the optical conductivity by Hartnoll et al. (Phys. Rev. B 84, 125115 (2011)). With a small bare velocity of the boson associated with the spin density wave order, there is an intermediate energy regime where hyperscaling is violated with ddtd \rightarrow d_t, where dt=1d_t = 1 is the number of dimensions transverse to the Fermi surface. We also present a Boltzmann equation analysis which indicates that the hot spot contribution to the DC conductivity has the same scaling as the optical conductivity, with TT replacing ω\omega.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1507.05962,
  title  = {Hyperscaling at the spin density wave quantum critical point in two dimensional metals},
  author = {Aavishkar A. Patel and Philipp Strack and Subir Sachdev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.05962},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

46 pages, 5 figures, To appear in Phys. Rev. B