Fermi surface reconstruction and drop of Hall number due to spiral antiferromagnetism in high-$T_c$ cuprates

Abstract

We show that a Fermi surface reconstruction due to spiral antiferromagnetic order may explain the rapid change in the Hall number as recently observed near optimal doping in cuprate superconductors [Badoux~\textit{et. al.}, Nature \textbf{531}, 210 (2016)]. The single-particle spectral function in the spiral state exhibits hole pockets which look like Fermi arcs due to a strong momentum dependence of the spectral weight. Adding charge-density wave order further reduces the Fermi surface to a single electron pocket. We propose quantum oscillation measurements to distinguish between commensurate and spiral antiferromagnetic order. Similar results apply to certain metals in which topological order replaces antiferromagnetic order.