Singular charge fluctuations at a magnetic quantum critical point

Prochaska, L. and Li, X. and MacFarland, D. C. and Andrews, A. M. and Bonta, M. and Bianco, E. F. and Yazdi, S. and Schrenk, W. and Detz, H. and Limbeck, A. and Si, Q. and Ringe, Emilie and Strasser, G. and Kono, J. and Paschen, S. (2020) Singular charge fluctuations at a magnetic quantum critical point. Science, 367 (6475). pp. 285-288. ISSN 0036-8075 DOI https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aag1595

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	NILAREP
Subjects:	03 - Mineral Sciences
Divisions:	03 - Mineral Sciences 08 - Green Open Access
Journal or Publication Title:	Science
Volume:	367
Page Range:	pp. 285-288
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aag1595
Depositing User:	Sarah Humbert
Date Deposited:	24 Jan 2020 11:32
Last Modified:	24 Jan 2020 11:32
URI:	http://eprints.esc.cam.ac.uk/id/eprint/4610

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