English

Tractable model for a fractionalized Fermi liquid (FL$^*$) on a square lattice

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2026-04-08 v1 Superconductivity

Abstract

Motivated by the continued interest in Fermi-surface reconstruction without symmetry breaking, we present an analytically tractable microscopic model of a fractionalized Fermi liquid (FL^*) on a square lattice and discuss its potential relevance to the cuprates. As in ancilla-qubit constructions, the model is related to Kondo lattice systems, but in this case, the conduction electrons interact with a Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 spin liquid of the Yao--Lee type, with a Majorana Fermi surface. The associated Z2\mathbb Z_2 gauge theory is static so that the model can be analytically solved to leading-logarithic accuracy. There are two phases: one in which the fractionalized fermions of the spin liquid hybridize with conduction electrons to form a common Fermi surface violating the naive Luttinger count, and one in which they remain decoupled. We discuss the salient features of the small Fermi-surface phase, including analytically derived momentum dependent coherence factors responsible for the appearance of Fermi arcs \`{a} la Yang-Rice-Zhang. We further discuss the impact of quantum and thermal fluctuations, including a strong diamagnetic response and a logarithmically divergent Sommerfeld coefficient at the onset of the pseudogap.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.06157,
  title  = {Tractable model for a fractionalized Fermi liquid (FL$^*$) on a square lattice},
  author = {Piers Coleman and Elio J. König and Aaditya Panigrahi and Alexei Tsvelik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.06157},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

7 pages + 2 appendices