Dominic J. Lee

Velocity anisotropy and the antiferromagnetic instability in theQED3theory of underdoped cuprates

We consider the effective 2+1 dimensional electrodynamics (QED_3) of low-energy quasiparticles coupled to fluctuating vortex loops in the d-wave superconductor, with the velocity anisotropy: v_F not equal to v_Delta. This theory should be relevant to the quantum superconductor-insulator transition in underdoped cuprates. Working in the customary large-N approximation, we find that weak anisotropy is a marginally irrelevant perturbation to the Lorentz invariant QED_3, and that the critical number N_c of Dirac fields below which the theory suffers the antiferromagnetic (chiral) instability stays the same.

Critical-point scaling function for the specific heat of a Ginzburg-Landau superconductor

If the zero-field transition in high temperature superconductors such as YBa_2Cu_3O_7-\delta is a critical point in the universality class of the 3-dimensional XY model, then the general theory of critical phenomena predicts the existence of a critical region in which thermodynamic functions have a characteristic scaling form. We report the first attempt to calculate the universal scaling function associated with the specific heat, for which experimental data have become available in recent years. Scaling behaviour is extracted from a renormalization-group analysis, and the 1/N expansion is adopted as a means of approximation. The estimated scaling function is qualitatively similar to that observed experimentally, and also to the lowest-Landau-level scaling function used by some authors to provide an alternative interpretation of the same data. Unfortunately, the 1/N expansion is not sufficiently reliable at small values of N for a quantitative fit to be feasible.

QED_3 theory of underdoped high temperature superconductors II: the quantum critical point

We study the effect of gapless quasiparticles in a d-wave superconductor on the T=0 end point of the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition line in underdoped high-temperature superconductors. Starting from a lattice model that has gapless fermions coupled to 3D XY phase fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter, we propose a continuum field theory to describe the quantum phase transition between the d-wave superconductor and the spin-density-wave insulator. Without fermions the theory reduces to the standard Higgs scalar electrodynamics (HSE), which is known to have the critical point in the inverted XY universality class. Extending the renormalization group calculation for the HSE to include the coupling to fermions, we find that the qualitative effect of fermions is to increase the portion of the space of coupling constants where the transition is discontinuous. The critical exponents at the stable fixed point vary continuously with the number of fermion fields

INFRARED DIVERGENCE IN QED3 AT FINITE TEMPERATURE

N

Renormalization group and 1 / N expansion for the three-dimensional Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson model

, and we estimate the correlation length exponent (nu = 0.65) and the vortex field anomalous dimension(eta_Phi=-0.48) at the quantum critical point for the physical case N=2. The stable critical point in the theory disappears for the number of Dirac fermions N>N_c, with N_c ~ 3.4 in our approximation. We discuss the relationship between the superconducting and the chiral (SDW) transitions, and point to some interesting parallels between our theory and the Thirring model.

Finite temperature time dependent effective theory for the Goldstone field in a BCS type superfluid

We consider various ways of treating the infrared divergence which appears in the dynamically generated fermion mass, when the transverse part of the photon propagator in N flavour

Spin and charge response of phase fluctuating d-wave superconductors

QED_{3}

Quantum critical point in theQED3theory of underdoped high-temperature superconductors

at finite temperature is included in the Matsubara formalism. This divergence is likely to be an artefact of taking into account only the leading order term in the

Phase fluctuating d-wave superconductors and the spin response in underdoped cuprates

1 \over N

The effect of anisotropy on the superconductor-antiferromagnet phase transition in an effective theory for the underdoped cuprates.

expansion when we calculate the photon propagator and is handled here phenomenologically by means of an infrared cutoff. Inserting both the longitudinal and the transverse part of the photon propagator in the Schwinger-Dyson equation we find the dependence of the dynamically generated fermion mass on the temperature and the cutoff parameters. It turns out that consistency with certain statistical physics arguments imposes conditions on the cutoff parameters. For parameters in the allowed range of values we find that the ratio