Holographic quantum criticality and strange metal transport
Bom Soo Kim, Elias Kiritsis, Christos Panagopoulos
备注：
39 pages, 7 figures, (v2) Major revision that considers a wider range of phenomena, explanations and comparisons to experimental data. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1107.2116
A holographic model of a quantum critical theory at a finite but low temperature, and finite density is studied. The model exhibits non-relativistic z=2 Schrödinger symmetry and is realized by the Anti-de-Sitter-Schwarzschild black hole in light-cone coordinates. Our approach addresses the electrical conductivities in the presence or absence of an applied magnetic field and contains a control parameter that can be associated to quantum tuning via charge carrier doping or an external field in correlated electron systems. The Ohmic resistivity, the inverse Hall angle, the Hall coefficient and the magnetoresistance are shown to be in good agreement with experimental results of strange metals at very low temperature. The holographic model also predicts new scaling relations in the presence of a magnetic field.
We identify the near-critical effective theory (EFT) for a wide class of low-temperature phase transitions found via holography. The EFT is of the semi-holographic type and describes both holographic Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) and second-order transitions with non-trivial scaling. It is a simple generalization of the Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson paradigm to systems with an emergent (or hidden) conformal sector. Having identified the near-critical EFT, we explore its basic phenomenology by computing critical exponents and low-frequency correlators.
Universally Diverging Grüneisen Ratio of Holographic Quantum Criticality
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）；School of Fundamental Physics and Mathematical Sciences, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, UCAS（杭州高等研究院基础物理与数学学院）
We present a strange metal, described by a holographic duality, which reproduces the famous linear resistivity of the normal state of the copper oxides, in addition to the linear specific heat. This holographic metal reveals a simple and general mechanism for producing such a resistivity, which requires only quenched disorder and a strongly interacting, locally quantum critical state. The key is the minimal viscosity of the latter: unlike in a Fermi-liquid, the viscosity is very small and therefore is important for the electrical transport. This mechanism produces a resistivity proportional to…
Holographic strange metals are known to have a power law resistivity rising with temperature, which is reminiscent of the strange metal phases in condensed matter systems. In some holographic models, however, the exponent of the power law in the resistivity can be negative. In this case one encounters phases with diverging resistivity at zero temperature: holographic strange insulators. These states arise as a result of translational symmetry breaking in the system, which can either be strong explicit and relevant in the IR, or spontaneous, but pinned by a small explicit source. In some regard…
A holographic description on antiferromagnetic quantum phase transition (QPT) induced by magnetic field and the criticality in the vicinity of quantum critical point (QCP) have been investigated numerically recently. In this paper, we show that the properties of QPT in this holographic model are governed by a CFT dual to the emergent AdS$_2$ in the IR region, which confirms that the dual boundary theory is a strong coupling theory with dynamic exponent $z=2$ and logarithmic corrections appear. We also compare them with the results from Hertz model by solving RG equation at its upper critical d…
We show that the near-extremal solutions of Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theories, studied in ArXiv:1005.4690, provide IR quantum critical geometries, by embedding classes of them in higher-dimensional AdS and Lifshitz solutions. This explains the scaling of their thermodynamic functions and their IR transport coefficients, the nature of their spectra, the Gubser bound, and regulates their singularities. We propose that these are the most general quantum critical IR asymptotics at finite density of EMD theories.
We characterize quantum oscillations in the magnetic susceptibility of a quantum critical non-Fermi liquid. The computation is performed in a strongly interacting regime using the nonperturbative holographic correspondence. The temperature dependence of the amplitude of the oscillations is shown to depend on a critical exponent nu. For general nu the temperature scaling is distinct from the textbook Lifshitz-Kosevich formula. At the `marginal' value nu = 1/2, the Lifshitz-Kosevich formula is recovered despite strong interactions. As a by-product of our analysis we present a formalism for compu…
The frequency dependence of the AC conductivity is studied in a holographic model of a non-fermi liquid that is amenable to both analytical and numerical computation. In the regime that dissipation dominates the DC conductivity, the AC conductivity is described well in the IR by a Drude peak despite the absence of quasiparticles. In the regime where pair-production-like processes dominate the conductivity there is no Drude peak. A scaling tail is found for the AC conductivity that is independent of the charge density and momentum dissipation. Evidence is given that this scaling tail $σ_{AC}\si…
We compute the direct current resistivity of a scale-invariant, $d$-dimensional strange metal with dynamic critical exponent $z$ and hyperscaling-violating exponent $θ$, weakly perturbed by a scalar operator coupled to random-field disorder that locally breaks a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry. Independent calculations via Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton holography and memory matrix methods lead to the same results. We show that random field disorder has a strong effect on resistivity: charge carriers in the infrared are easily depleted, as the relaxation time for momentum is surprisingly small. In the cours…
A fundamental challenge to our current understanding of metals is the frequent observation of qualitative departures from Fermi liquid behavior. The standard view attributes such non-Fermi liquid phenomena to the scattering of electrons off quantum critical fluctuations of an underlying order parameter. While the possibility of non-Fermi liquid behavior isolated from the border of magnetism has long been speculated, no experimental confirmation has been made. Here we report on the observation of a strange metal region in the absence of a magnetic instability in an ultrapure single crystal. In …
We derive a holographic dual for a gauged matrix model in general dimensions from a first-principle construction. The dual theory is shown to be a closed string field theory which includes a compact two-form gauge field coupled with closed strings in one higher dimensional space. Possible phases of the matrix model are discussed in the holographic description. Besides the confinement phase and the IR free deconfinement phase, there can be two different classes of critical states. The first class describes `holographic critical states' where strings are deconfined in the bulk. The second class …
The multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) is a tensor network that can efficiently parameterize critical ground states on a 1D lattice, and also suggestively implement some aspects of the holographic correspondence of string theory on a lattice. Extending our recent work [S. Singh, Physical Review D 97, 026012 (2018); S. Singh, N. A. McMahon, and G. K. Brennen, Phys. Rev. D 97, 026013 (2018)], we show how the MERA representation of a 1D critical ground state---which has long range entanglement---can be viewed as a strange correlator: the overlap of a 2D state with short range …
Many unconventional superconductors exhibit a common set of anomalous charge transport properties that characterize them as `strange metals', which provides hope that there is single theory that describes them. However, model-independent connections between the strange metal and superconductivity have remained elusive. In this letter, we show that the Hall effect of the unconventional superconductor BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$ contains an anomalous contribution arising from the correlations within the strange metal. This term has a distinctive dependence on magnetic field, which allows us to…
The strange metal behavior, usually characterized by a linear-in-temperature (T) resistivity, is a still unsolved mystery in solid-state physics. Usually it is associated with the proximity to a quantum critical point (a second order transition at temperature T = 0) focusing on the related divergent order parameter correlation length. Here, we propose a paradigmatic shift, focusing on a divergent characteristic time scale due to a divergent dissipation acting on the fluctuating critical modes, while their correlation length stays finite. To achieve a divergent dissipation, we propose a mechani…
Holographic Strange Metals for Philosophers and Physicists
University of Geneva（日内瓦大学）；Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学荷兰涌现现象研究所）；Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学逻辑、语言与计算研究所）；Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学物理研究所）；Institute for Theoretical Physics and Centre for Extreme Matter and Emergent Phenomena, Utrecht University（乌得勒支大学理论物理研究所及极端物质与涌现现象中心）
We present a semi-analytic method for constructing holographic black holes that interpolate from anti-de Sitter space to hyperscaling-violating geometries. These are holographic duals of conformal field theories in the presence of an applied chemical potential, $μ$, at a non-zero temperature, $T$, and allow us to describe the crossover from `strange metal' physics at $T \ll μ$, to conformal physics at $T \gg μ$. Our holographic technique adds an extra gauge field and exploits structure of the Einstein-Maxwell system to manifestly find 1-parameter families of solutions of the Einstein-matter sy…
We study electrical transport in a strongly coupled strange metal in two spatial dimensions at finite temperature and charge density, holographically dual to Einstein-Maxwell theory in an asymptotically $\mathrm{AdS}_4$ spacetime, with arbitrary spatial inhomogeneity, up to mild assumptions including emergent isotropy. In condensed matter, these are candidate models for exotic strange metals without long-lived quasiparticles. We prove that the electrical conductivity is bounded from below by a universal minimal conductance: the quantum critical conductivity of a clean, charge-neutral plasma. B…
Increasing the spin imbalance in superconductors can spatially modulate the gap by forming Cooper pairs with finite momentum. For large imbalances compared to the Fermi energy, the inhomogeneous FFLO superconductor ultimately becomes a normal metal. There is mounting experimental evidence for this scenario in 2D organic superconductors in large in-plane magnetic fields; this is complemented by ongoing efforts to realize this scenario in coupled tubes of atomic Fermi gases with spin imbalance. Yet, a theory for the phase transition from a metal to an FFLO superconductor has not been developed s…
We demonstrate how self-sourced collective modes - of which the plasmon is a prominent example due to its relevance in modern technological applications - are identified in strongly correlated systems described by holographic Maxwell theories. The characteristic $ω\propto \sqrt{k}$ plasmon dispersion for 2D materials, such as graphene, naturally emerges from this formalism. We also demonstrate this by constructing the first holographic model containing this feature. This provides new insight into modeling such systems from a holographic point of view, bottom-up and top-down alike. Beyond that,…
Using high-precision numerical analysis, we show that 3+1 dimensional gauge theories holographically dual to 4+1 dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory undergo a quantum phase transition in the presence of a finite charge density and magnetic field. The quantum critical theory has dynamical scaling exponent z=3, and is reached by tuning a relevant operator of scaling dimension 2. For magnetic field B above the critical value B_c, the system behaves as a Fermi liquid. As the magnetic field approaches B_c from the high field side, the specific heat coefficient diverges as 1/(B-B_c), an…
P. W. Phillips, N. E. Hussey, P. Abbamonte (Review Article, 8 July 2022, eabh4273) consider heavy fermion (HF) metals and high-$T_c$ superconductors naming them strange metals. They analyze such features of strange metals as quantum criticality, Planckian dissipation and recently observed fundamental link between the high-$T_c$ superconductivity and strange metals, and conclude that these problems can be possibly resolved within the framework of theories based on gravity, etc. In this comment we discuss that this claim is not correct and the successful description of the quantum criticality, P…
We study lattice effects in strongly coupled systems of fermions at a finite density described by a holographic dual consisting of fermions in Anti-de-Sitter space in the presence of a Reissner-Nordstrom black hole. The lattice effect is encoded by a periodic modulation of the chemical potential with a wavelength of order of the intrinsic length scales of the system. This corresponds with a highly complicated "band structure" problem in AdS, which we only manage to solve in the weak potential limit. The "domain wall" fermions in AdS encoding for the Fermi surfaces in the boundary field theory …
It is presently unknown how strong lattice potentials influence the fermion spectral function of the holographic strange metals predicted by the AdS/CFT correspondence. This embodies a crucial test for the application of holography to condensed matter experiments. We show that for one particular momentum direction this spectrum can be computed for arbitrary strength of the effective translational symmetry breaking potential of the so-called Bianchi-VII geometry employing ordinary differential equations. Deep in the strange metal regime we find rather small changes to the single-fermion respons…
Capturing the interplay between electronic correlations and many-particle entanglement requires a unified framework for Hamiltonian and eigenbasis renormalization. In this work, we apply the unitary renormalization group (URG) scheme developed in a companion work (Ref.[1]) to the study of two archetypal models of stongly correlated lattice electrons, one with translation invariance and one without. We obtain detailed insight into the emergence of various gapless and gapped phases of quantum electronic matter by computing effective Hamiltonians as well as entanglement signatures through their r…
We study the spectral functions of fermionic operators in 1+1 dimensional SU(N) Super Yang-Mills theory with 16 supercharges at finite density using the holographically dual D1-brane geometry. This system exhibits quasi-particle peaks indicating the existence of Fermi points about which excitations have a finite relaxation time, in contrast with the Tomonaga-Luttinger model. The finite width may be attributed to the non-trivial interactions of the probe operators with the background density matrix, modeled holographically as a charged black hole. We show that the fermionic correlators can in f…
We model strange metals as quantum liquids without quasiparticle excitations, but with slow momentum relaxation, and with slow diffusive dynamics of a conserved charge and energy. General expressions are obtained for electrical, thermal and thermoelectric transport in the presence of an applied magnetic field using the memory matrix formalism. In the appropriate limits, our expressions agree with previous hydrodynamic and holographic results. We discuss the relationship of such results to thermoelectric and Hall transport measurements in the strange metal phase of the hole-doped cuprates.
Understanding electrical transport in strange metals, including the seeming universality of Planckian $T$-linear resistivity, remains a longstanding challenge in condensed matter physics. We propose that local imaging techniques, such as nitrogen vacancy center magnetometry, can locally identify signatures of quantum critical response which are invisible in measurements of a bulk electrical resistivity. As an illustrative example, we use a minimal holographic model for a strange metal in two spatial dimensions to predict how electrical current will flow in regimes dominated by quantum critical…
We study finite temperature effects in two distinct holographic models that exhibit Lifshitz scaling, looking to identify model independent features in the dual strong coupling physics. We consider the thermodynamics of black branes and find different low-temperature behavior of the specific heat. Deformation away from criticality leads to non-trivial temperature dependence of correlation functions and we study how the characteristic length scale in the two point function of scalar operators varies as a function of temperature and deformation parameters.
Holographic methods are used to investigate the low temperature limit, including quantum critical behavior, of strongly coupled 4-dimensional gauge theories in the presence of an external magnetic field, and finite charge density. In addition to the metric, the dual gravity theory contains a Maxwell field with Chern-Simons coupling. In the absence of charge, the magnetic field induces an RG flow to an infrared AdS$_3 \times {\bf R}^2$ geometry, which is dual to a 2-dimensional CFT representing strongly interacting fermions in the lowest Landau level. Two asymptotic Virasoro algebras and one ch…
We review a recent holographic analysis arXiv:1005.4690 of charged black holes with scalar hair in view of their applications to the cuprate high temperature superconductors. We show in particular that these black holes show an interesting phase structure including critical behaviour at zero temperature or charge, describe both conductors and insulators (including holographic Mott-like insulators), generically have no residual entropy and exhibit experimentally observed scaling relations between electronic entropy, specific heat and (linear) DC resistivity. Transport properties are discussed i…
How to make a model of a non-Fermi-liquid metal with efficient current dissipation is a long-standing problem. Results from holographic duality suggest a framework where local critical fermionic degrees of freedom provide both a source of decoherence for the Landau quasiparticle, and a sink for its momentum. This leads us to study a Kondo lattice type model with SYK models in place of the spin impurities. We find evidence for a stable phase at intermediate couplings.
We investigate the butterfly effect and charge diffusion near the quantum phase transition in holographic approach. We argue that their criticality is controlled by the holographic scaling geometry with deformations induced by a relevant operator at finite temperature. Specifically, in the quantum critical region controlled by a single fixed point, the butterfly velocity decreases when deviating from the critical point. While, in the non-critical region, the behavior of the butterfly velocity depends on the specific phase at low temperature. Moreover, in the holographic Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-…
We consider granular quantum matter defined by Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) dots coupled via random one-body hopping. Within the framework of Schwarzian field theory, we identify a zero temperature quantum phase transition between an insulating phase at weak and a metallic phase at strong hopping. The critical hopping strength scales inversely with the number of degrees of freedom on the dots. The increase of temperature out of either phase induces a crossover into a regime of strange metallic behavior.
Nonlocality can generate $ω/T$ scaling without criticality in high $T_c$ strange metals
National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学量子技术中心）；Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学汤川理论物理研究所）
We analyze a candidate theory for the strange metal near optimal hole-doping in the cuprate superconductors. The theory contains a quantum phase transition between metals with large and small Fermi surfaces of spinless fermions carrying the electromagnetic charge of the electron, but the transition does not directly involve any broken global symmetries. The two metals have emergent SU(2) and U(1) gauge fields respectively, and the transition is driven by the condensation of a real Higgs field, carrying a finite lattice momentum and an adjoint SU(2) gauge charge. This Higgs field measures the l…
The plasmon is a ubiquitous collective mode in charged liquids. Due to the long-range Coulomb interaction, the massless zero sound mode of the neutral system acquires a finite plasmon frequency in the long-wavelength limit. In the zero-temperature state of conventional metals -- the Fermi liquid -- the plasmon lives infinitely long at long wavelength when the system is (effectively) translationally invariant. In contrast, we will show that in strongly entangled strange metals the protection of zero sound fails at finite frequency and plasmons are always short lived regardless of their waveleng…
The loss of criticality in the form of weak first-order transitions or the end of the conformal window in gauge theories can be described as the merging of two fixed points that move to complex values of the couplings. When the complex fixed points are close to the real axis, the system typically exhibits walking behavior with Miransky (or Berezinsky-Kosterlitz-Thouless) scaling. We present a novel realization of these phenomena at strong coupling by means of the gauge/gravity duality, and give evidence for the conjectured existence of complex conformal field theories at the fixed points.
Recent experiments on quantum criticality in the Ge-substituted heavy-electron material YbRh2Si2 under magnetic field have revealed a possible non-Fermi liquid (NFL) strange metal (SM) state over a finite range of fields at low temperatures, which still remains a puzzle. In the SM region, the zero-field antiferromagnetism is suppressed. Above a critical field, it gives way to a heavy Fermi liquid with Kondo correlation. The T (temperature)-linear resistivity and the T-logarithmic followed by a power-law singularity in the specific heat coefficient at low T, salient NFL behaviours in the SM reg…
Although the resistivity in traditional metals increases with temperature, its $T$ dependence vanishes at low or high temperature, albeit for different reasons. Here, we review a class of materials, known as \lq strange' metals, that can violate both principles. In materials exhibiting such behavior, the change in slope of the resistivity as the mean free path drops below the lattice constant, or as $T \rightarrow 0$, can be imperceptible, suggesting complete continuity between the charge carriers at low and high $T$. Since particles cannot scatter at length scales shorter than the interatomic…
We perform a unitary renormalization group (URG) study of the 1D fermionic Hubbard model. The formalism generates a family of effective Hamiltonians and many-body eigenstates arranged holographically across the tensor network from UV to IR. The URG is realized as a quantum circuit, leading to the entanglement holographic mapping (EHM) tensor network description. A topological $Θ$-term of the projected Hilbert space of the degrees of freedom at the Fermi surface are shown to govern the nature of RG flow towards either the gapless Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid or gapped quantum liquid phases. This r…
We use a holographic theory to model and study the competition of four phases: an antiferromagnetic phase, a superconducting phase, a metallic phase and a striped phase, using as control parameters temperature and a doping-like parameter. We analyse the various instabilities and determine the possible phases. One class of phase diagrams, that we analyse in detail, is similar to that of high-temperature superconductors as well as other strange metal materials.
Holographic Representations of Topological Quantum Criticality: Emergent Symmetry Approach around the Bott Clock
Key Laboratory of Quantum Materials and Devices of Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Southeast University（东南大学物理学院教育部量子材料与器件重点实验室）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia（不列颠哥伦比亚大学物理与天文系）
We initiate a holographic model building approach to `strange metallic' phenomenology. Our model couples a neutral Lifshitz-invariant quantum critical theory, dual to a bulk gravitational background, to a finite density of gapped probe charge carriers, dually described by D-branes. In the physical regime of temperature much lower than the charge density and gap, we exhibit anomalous scalings of the temperature and frequency dependent conductivity. Choosing the dynamical critical exponent $z$ appropriately we can match the non-Fermi liquid scalings, such as linear resistivity, observed in stran…
Recent experimental work has brought the twin issues of the origin of non-Lifshitz-Kosevich scaling in de Haas van Alphen (dHvA) and its precise relation to anomalously broad non-quasiparticle spectral features in "strange" metals, to the forefront. Here, we revisit these issues in the specific context of a "local" quantum critical phase in an extended periodic Anderson model (EPAM). In contrast to the famed Kondo-RKKY scenarios for local quantum criticality, strong local valence fluctuations cause Kondo destruction in the EPAM. We uncover a common underlying element, namely, the Kondo-destruc…
We present an infinite class of 2+1 dimensional field theories which, after coupling to semi-holographic fermions, exhibit strange metallic behavior in a suitable large $N$ limit. These theories describe lattices of hypermultiplet defects interacting with parity-preserving supersymmetric Chern-Simons theories with $U(N) \times U(N)$ gauge groups at levels $\pm k$. They have dual gravitational descriptions in terms of lattices of probe M2 branes in $AdS_4 \times S^7/Z_k$ (for $N \gg 1, N \gg k^5$) or probe D2 branes in $AdS_4 \times CP^3$ (for $N \gg k \gg 1, N \ll k^5$). We discuss several cha…
Pressure-induced superconductivity beyond magnetic quantum criticality in a Kondo ferromagnet
New Cornerstone Science Laboratory, Center for Correlated Matter and School of Physics, Zhejiang University（浙江大学物理学院关联物质中心新基石科学实验室）；Hubei Key Laboratory of Photoelectric Materials and Devices, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei Normal University（湖北师范大学材料科学与工程学院光电材料与器件湖北省重点实验室）
We study in detail the transverse collective modes of simple holographic models in presence of electromagnetic Coulomb interactions. We render the Maxwell gauge field dynamical via mixed boundary conditions, corresponding to a double trace deformation in the boundary field theory. We consider three different situations: (i) a holographic plasma with conserved momentum, (ii) a holographic (dirty) plasma with finite momentum relaxation and (iii) a holographic viscoelastic plasma with propagating transverse phonons. We observe two interesting new features induced by the Coulomb interactions: a mo…
