Density-wave instabilities of fractionalized Fermi liquids

Abstract

Recent experiments in the underdoped regime of the hole-doped cuprates have found evidence for an incommensurate charge density wave state. We present an analysis of the charge ordering instabilities in a metal with antiferromagnetic correlations, where the electronic excitations are coupled to the fractionalized excitations of a quantum fluctuating antiferromagnet on the square lattice. The resulting charge density wave state emerging out of such a fractionalized Fermi-liquid (FL*) has wavevectors of the form $(\pm Q_0,0), (0,\pm Q_0)$, with a predominantly $d$-form factor, in agreement with experiments on a number of different families of the cuprates. In contrast, as previously shown, the charge density wave instability of a nearly antiferromagnetic metal with a large Fermi surface, interacting via short-range interactions, has wavevectors of the type $(\pm Q_0,\pm Q_0)$. Our results show that the observed charge density wave appears as a low-energy instability of a fractionalized metallic state linked to the proximity to an antiferromagnetic insulator, and the pseudogap regime can be described by such a metal at least over intermediate length and energy scales.