Quasi-Local Strange Metal

Abstract

One of the key factors that determine the fates of quantum many-body systems in the zero temperature limit is the competition between kinetic energy that delocalizes particles in space and interaction that promotes localization. While one dominates over the other in conventional metals and insulators, exotic states can arise at quantum critical points where none of them clearly wins. Here we present a novel metallic state that is realized at the antiferromagnetic (AF) quantum critical point in space dimensions three and below. At the critical point, interactions between particles are screened to zero in the low energy limit at the same time the kinetic energy is suppressed in certain spatial directions to the leading order in a perturbative expansion that becomes asymptotically exact in three dimensions. The resulting dispersionless and interactionless state exhibits distinct quasi-local strange metallic behaviors due to the subtle dynamical balance between screening and infrared singularity caused by the spontaneous reduction of effective dimensionality.