Anomalous critical behavior near the quantum critical point of a hole-doped La2CuO4

Abstract

The Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm for critical phenomena is spectacularly successful whenever the critical temperature is finite and all fluctuation modes, with characteristic energies much smaller than the thermal energy, obey classical statistics. In zero-temperature quantum critical phenomena, classical thermal fluctuations are replaced by zero-point quantum fluctuations and quantum-mechanical generalization of the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm has been a central topic in condensed-matter physics. In this neutron-scattering study on spin fluctuations near the quantum critical point induced by hole-doping in La2CuO4 (Li doping concentration from 0.04 to 0.1), the phase boundary for quantum crossover expected from the generalized quantum theory for critical phenomena was observed for the first time. Furthermore, critical exponent and scaling function become anomalous near the quantum critical point, which has not been expected in current theories.