Confinement transition to density wave order in metallic doped spin liquids

Abstract

Insulating quantum spin liquids can undergo a confinement transition to a valence bond solid state via the condensation of topological excitations of the associated gauge theory. We extend the theory of such transitions to fractionalized Fermi liquids (FL*): these are metallic doped spin liquids in which the Fermi surfaces only have gauge neutral quasiparticles. Using insights from a duality transform on a doped quantum dimer model for the U(1)-FL* state, we show that projective symmetry group of the theory of the topological excitations remains unmodified, but the Fermi surfaces can lead to additional frustrating interactions. We propose a theory for the confinement transition of $\mathbb{Z}_2$-FL* states via the condensation of visons. A variety of confining, incommensurate density wave states are possible, including some that are similar to the incommensurate $d$-form factor density wave order observed in several recent experiments on the cuprate superconductors.