Underdoped cuprates as fractionalized Fermi liquids: Transition to superconductivity

Abstract

We model the underdoped cuprates using fermions moving in a background with local antiferromagnetic order. The antiferromagnetic order fluctuates in orientation, but not in magnitude, so that there is no long-range antiferromagnetism, but a “topological” order survives. The normal state is described as a fractionalized Fermi liquid (FL*), with electronlike quasiparticles coupled to the fractionalized excitations of the fluctuating antiferromagnet. The electronic quasiparticles reside near pocket Fermi surfaces enclosing total area x (the dopant density), centered away from the magnetic Brillouin zone boundary. The violation of the conventional Luttinger theorem is linked to a “species doubling” of these quasiparticles. We describe phenomenological theories of the pairing of these quasiparticles, and show that a large class of mean-field theories generically displays a nodal-antinodal “dichotomy”: The interplay of local antiferromagnetism and pairing leads to a small gap near the nodes of the d-wave pairing along the Brillouin zone diagonals, and a large gap in the antinodal region.

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