English

Non-Fermi liquid and topological states with strong spin-orbit coupling

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2013-11-20 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

We argue that a class of strongly spin-orbit coupled materials, including some pyrochlore iridates and the inverted band gap semiconductor HgTe, may be described by a minimal model consisting of the Luttinger Hamiltonian supplemented by Coulomb interactions, a problem studied by Abrikosov and collaborators. It contains two-fold degenerate conduction and valence bands touching quadratically at the zone center. Using modern renormalization group methods, we update and extend Abrikosov's classic work and show that interactions induce a quantum critical non-Fermi liquid phase, stable provided time-reversal and cubic symmetries are maintained. We determine the universal power-law exponents describing various observables in this "Luttinger Abrikosov Beneslavskii" state, which include conductivity, specific heat,non-linear susceptibility and magnetic Gruneisen number. Furthermore, we determine the phase diagram in the presence of cubic and/or time-reversal symmetry breaking perturbations, which includes topological insulator and Weyl semi-metal phases. Many of these phases possess an extraordinarily large anomalous Hall effect, with the Hall conductivity scaling sub-linearly with magnetization.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1212.1168,
  title  = {Non-Fermi liquid and topological states with strong spin-orbit coupling},
  author = {Eun-Gook Moon and Cenke Xu and Yong Baek Kim and Leon Balents},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.1168},
  year   = {2013}
}

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4+3 pages