Fermi surface change across a deconfined quantum critical point

Abstract

The quantum phase transitions of metals have been extensively studied in the rare-earth "heavy electron" materials, the cuprates, and related compounds. The Fermi surface of the metal often has different shapes in the states well away from the critical point. It has been proposed that these differences can persist up to the critical point, setting up a discontinuous Fermi surface change across a continuous quantum transition. We study square lattice antiferromagnets undergoing a continuous transition from a Neel state to a valence bond solid, and examine the fate of a small density of holes in the two phases. Fermi surfaces of charge e, spin 1/2 quasiparticles appear in both phases, enclosing the usual Luttinger area. However, additional quantum numbers cause the area enclosed by each Fermi surface pocket to jump by a factor of 2 across the transition in the limit of small density. We demonstrate that the electronic spectrum across this transition is described by a critical theory of a localized impurity coupled to a 2+1 dimensional conformal field theory. This critical theory also controls the more complex Fermi surface crossover at fixed density, which likely involves intermediate phases with exotic fractionalized excitations. We suggest that such theories control the electronic spectrum in the pseudogap phase of the cuprates.