CMSA Condensed Matter/Math Seminar: Deconfined metallic quantum criticality-I

CMSA EVENTS

Speaker:

Debanjan Chowdhury - Cornell University

A number of strongly correlated electronic materials exhibit quantum criticality that does not fit into the conventional Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm of continuous phase transitions. Inspired by these experimental examples, I will discuss a new class of quantum phase transitions that describe a continuous transition between a Fermi liquid metal with a generic electronic Fermi surface and electrical insulators without Fermi surface of neutral excitations. Such phase transitions are described in terms of a finite density of fractionalized excitations coupled to emergent gauge fields. I will discuss various concrete examples of such gauge theories and describe their associated phase transitions using a renormalization group framework.  Remarkably, we find examples of continuous phase transitions between Landau Fermi liquid metals and insulators, where the quantum critical point hosts a non-Fermi liquid with a sharp Fermi surface but no long-lived quasiparticles. I will comment on the relevance of this new theoretical framework for some of the most pressing questions in the field of quantum matter.

Zoom: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/977347126