Singular charge fluctuations at a magnetic quantum critical point

journal article in Web of Science

English

Strange metal behavior is ubiquitous in correlated materials, ranging from cuprate superconductors to bilayer graphene, and may arise from physics beyond the quantum fluctuations of a Landau order parameter. In quantum-critical heavy-fermion antiferromagnets, such physics may be realized as critical Kondo entanglement of spin and charge and probed with optical conductivity. We present terahertz time-domain transmission spectroscopy on molecular beam epitaxy-grown thin films of YbRh2Si2, a model strange-metal compound. We observed frequency over temperature scaling of the optical conductivity as a hallmark of beyond-Landau quantum criticality. Our discovery suggests that critical charge fluctuations play a central role in the strange metal behavior, elucidating one of the long-standing mysteries of correlated quantum matter.

SINGLE-CRYSTAL GROWTH; CRITICAL-BEHAVIOR; HEAVY; TEMPERATURE; YBRH2SI2; CONDUCTIVITY; DESTRUCTION; SILICON; METALS

Prochaska, L.; Li, X.; MacFarland, DC.; Andrews, AM.; Bonta, M.; Bianco, EF.; Yazdi, S.; Schrenk, W.; Detz, H.; Limbeck, A.; Si, Q.; Ringe, E.; Strasser, G.; Kono, J.; Paschen, S.

17. 1. 2020

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

WASHINGTON

1095-9203

SCIENCE

367

6475

United States of America

285

+

21

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6475/285.abstract