English

Intermediate-scale theory for electrons coupled to frustrated local-moments

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2023-01-27 v2 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

A classic route for destroying long-lived electronic quasiparticles in a weakly interacting Fermi liquid is to couple them to other low-energy degrees of freedom that effectively act as a bath. We consider here the problem of electrons scattering off the spin fluctuations of a geometrically frustrated antiferromagnet, whose non-linear Landau-Lifshitz dynamics, which remains non-trivial at all temperatures, we model in detail. At intermediate temperatures and in the absence of any magnetic ordering, the fluctuating local-moments lead to a non-trivial angular anisotropy of the scattering-rate along the Fermi surface, which disappears with increasing temperature, elucidating the role of "hot-spots". Over a remarkably broad window of intermediate and high temperatures, the electronic properties can be described by employing a local approximation for the dynamical spin-response. This we contrast with the more familiar setup of electrons scattering off classical phonons, whose high-temperature limit differs fundamentally on account of their unbounded Hilbert space. We place our results in the context of layered magnetic delafossite compounds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.10087,
  title  = {Intermediate-scale theory for electrons coupled to frustrated local-moments},
  author = {Adam J. McRoberts and J. F. Mendez-Valderrama and Roderich Moessner and Debanjan Chowdhury},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.10087},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

4.5 pages, 3 figures. Supplementary material: 6 pages, 4 figures