Thermally generated vortices, gauge invariance and electron spectral function in the pseudo-gap regime

Abstract

Starting from classical vortex fluctuation picture, we study the single electron properties in the pseudogap regime. We show that it is the gauge invariant Green function of spinon which is directly related to ARPES data in the pseudogap regime instead of the non-gauge invariant one. We find that the random gauge field from the thermally generated vortices completely destroys the coherent spinon motion and leads to excitations pertinent to non-Fermi liquid behaviors. The Energy Distribution Curves (EDC) show broad peaks, while the Momentum Distribution Curve (MDC) show sharp peaks with Lorenz form. The local density of state at zero energy scales as the inverse of Kosterlize-Thouless length. These results are qualitatively consistent with the ARPES data in the pseudo-gap regime.