Multi-scale fluctuations near a Kondo Breakdown Quantum Critical Point

We study the Kondo-Heisenberg model using a fermionic representation for the localized spins. The mean-field phase diagram exhibits a zero temperature quantum critical point separating a spin liquid phase where the f-conduction hybridization vanishes, and a Kondo phase where it does not. Two solutions can be stabilized in the Kondo phase, namely a uniform hybridization when the band masses of the conduction electrons and the f spinons have the same sign, and a modulated one when they have opposite sign. For the uniform case, we show that above a very small Fermi liquid temperature scale (~1 mK), the critical fluctuations associated with the vanishing hybridization have dynamical exponent z=3, giving rise to a specific heat coefficient that diverges logarithmically in temperature, as well as a conduction electron inverse lifetime that has a T log T behavior. Because the f spinons do not carry current, but act as an effective bath for the relaxation of the current carried by the conduction electrons, the latter result also gives rise to a T log T behavior in the resistivity. This behavior is consistent with observations in a number of heavy fermion metals.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure

Selective Mott transition and heavy fermions

Starting with an extended version of the Anderson lattice where the f-electrons are allowed a weak dispersion, we examine the possibility of a Mott localization of the f-electrons, for a finite value of the hybridization $V$. We study the fluctuations at the quantum critical point (QCP) where the f-electrons localize. We find they are in the same universality class as for the Kondo breakdown QCP, with the following notable features. The quantum critical regime sees the appearance of an additional energy scale separating two universality classes. In the low energy regime, the fluctuations are dominated by massless gauge modes, while in the intermediate energy regime, the fluctuations of the modulus of the order parameter are the most relevant ones. In the latter regime, electric transport simplifies drastically, leading to a quasi-linear resistivity in 3D and anomalous exponents lower than T in 2 D. This rather unique feature of the quantum critical regime enables us to make experimentally testable predictions.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figure

Low energy excitations and singular contributions in the thermodynamics of clean Fermi liquids

Using a recently suggested method of bosonization in an arbitrary dimension, we study the anomalous contribution of the low energy spin and charge excitations to thermodynamic quantities of a two-dimensional (2D) Fermi liquid. The method is slightly modified for the present purpose such that the effective supersymmetric action no longer contains the high energy degrees of freedom but still accounts for effects of the finite curvature of the Fermi surface. Calculating the anomalous contribution $\delta c(T)$ to the specific heat, we show that the leading logarithmic in temperature corrections to $\delta c(T)/T^2$ can be obtained in a scheme combining a summation of ladder diagrams and renormalization group equations. The final result is represented as the sum of two separate terms that can be interpreted as coming from singlet and triplet superconducting excitations. The latter may diverge in certain regions of the coupling constants, which should correspond to the formation of triplet Cooper pairs.Comment: 29 pages, 13 figure

Density of states for dirty d-wave superconductors: A unified and dual approach for different types of disorder

A two-parameter field theoretical representation is given of a 2-dimensional dirty d-wave superconductor that interpolates between the Gaussian limit of uncorrelated weak disorder and the unitary limit of a dilute concentration of resonant scatterers. It is argued that a duality holds between these two regimes from which follows that a linearly vanishing density of states in the Gaussian limit transforms into a diverging one in the unitary limit arbitrarily close to the Fermi energy

Fermi-Surface Reconstruction in the Periodic Anderson Model

We study ground state properties of periodic Anderson model in a two-dimensional square lattice with variational Monte Carlo method. It is shown that there are two different types of quantum phase transition: a conventional antiferromagnetic transition and a Fermi-surface reconstruction which accompanies a change of topology of the Fermi surface. The former is induced by a simple back-folding of the Fermi surface while the latter is induced by localization of $f$ electrons. The mechanism of these transitions and the relation to the recent experiments on Fermi surface are discussed in detail.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Journal of the Physical Society of Japa

Temperature and ac Effects on Charge Transport in Metallic Arrays of Dots

We investigate the effects of finite temperature, dc pulse, and ac drives on the charge transport in metallic arrays using numerical simulations. For finite temperatures there is a finite conduction threshold which decreases linearly with temperature. Additionally we find a quadratic scaling of the current-voltage curves which is independent of temperature for finite thresholds. These results are in excellent agreement with recent experiments on 2D metallic dot arrays. We have also investigated the effects of an ac drive as well as a suddenly applied dc drive. With an ac drive the conduction threshold decreases for fixed frequency and increasing amplitude and saturates for fixed amplitude and increasing frequency. For sudden applied dc drives below threshold we observe a long time power law conduction decay.Comment: 6 pages, 7 postscript figure

How do Fermi liquids get heavy and die?

We discuss non-Fermi liquid and quantum critical behavior in heavy fermion materials, focussing on the mechanism by which the electron mass appears to diverge at the quantum critical point. We ask whether the basic mechanism for the transformation involves electron diffraction off a quantum critical spin density wave, or whether a break-down in the composite nature of the heavy electron takes place at the quantum critical point. We show that the Hall constant changes continously in the first scenario, but may ``jump'' discontinuously at a quantum critical point where the composite character of the electron quasiparticles changes.Comment: Revised version with many new references added. To appear as a topical review in Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter Physics. Two column version http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~coleman/online/questions.ps.g

Quasiparticle Localization in Disordered d-Wave Superconductors

An extensive numerical study is reported on disorder effect in two-dimensional d-wave superconductors with random impurities in the unitary limit. It is found that a sharp resonant peak shows up in the density of states at zero energy and correspondingly the finite-size spin conductance is strongly enhanced which results in a non-universal feature in one-parameter scaling. However, all quasiparticle states remain localized, indicating that the resonant density peak alone is not sufficient to induce delocalization. In the weak disorder limit, the localization length is so long that the spin conductance at small sample size is close to the universal value predicted by Lee (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 71}, 1887 (1993)).Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Order from Disorder: Non Magnetic Impurities in the Spin-gap Phase of the Cuprates

We solve the problem of $N$ non magnetic impurities in the staggered flux phase of the Heisenberg model which we assume to be a good mean-field approximation for the spin-gap phase of the cuprates. The density of states is evaluated exactly in the unitary limit and is porportional to 1/\left (\omega \ln^2(|\omega|/D)), in analogy with the 1D case of doped spin-Peierls and two-leg ladders compounds. We argue that the system exhibits a quasi long-range order at T=0 with instantaneous spin-spin correlations decreasing as n_i/ \ln^2\left (n_i R_{ij}) for large distances $R_{ij}$ and we predict enhanced low energy fluctuations in Neutron Scattering.Comment: 4 pages, corrected typos, references adde