Slow Fermions in Quantum Critical Metals

Abstract

We study the low-energy behavior of metals coupled to gapless bosons. This problem arises in several contexts in modern condensed matter physics; we focus on the theory of metals near continuous quantum phase transitions (where the boson is the order parameter). In the vicinity of d=3 spatial dimensions, the upper critical dimension of the theory, the ratio of fermion and boson speeds, v/c, acts as an additional control parameter, enabling us to access IR fixed points where this ratio vanishes. This limit corresponds to a non-Fermi liquid coupled to bosons with critical exponents governed by the Wilson-Fisher fixed point.