Probing a Bose metal via electrons: inescapable non-Fermi liquid scattering and pseudogap physics

Abstract

Abstract Non-Fermi liquid behavior and pseudogap formation are among the most well-known examples of exotic spectral features observed in several strongly correlated materials such as the hole-doped cuprates, nickelates, iridates, ruthenates, ferropnictides, doped Mott organics, transition metal dichalcogenides, heavy fermions, d- and f-electron metals, etc. We demonstrate that these features are inevitable consequences when fermions couple to an unconventional Bose metal (Hegg et al 2021 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 118) mean field consisting of lower-dimensional coherence. Not only do we find both exotic phenomena, but also a host of other features that have been observed e.g. in the cuprates including nodal anti-nodal dichotomy and pseudogap asymmetry (symmetry) in momentum (real) space. Obtaining these exotic and heretofore mysterious phenomena via a mean field offers a simple, universal, and therefore widely applicable explanation for their ubiquitous empirical appearance.