Deconfined criticality and ghost Fermi surfaces at the onset of antiferromagnetism in a metal

Understand

We propose a general theoretical framework, using two layers of ancilla qubits, for deconfined criticality between a Fermi liquid with a large Fermi surface, and a pseudogap metal with a small Fermi surface of electron-like quasiparticles.

• The pseudogap metal can be a magnetically ordered metal, or a fractionalized Fermi liquid (FL*) without magnetic order.
• A critical 'ghost' Fermi surface emerges (alongside the large electron Fermi surface) at the transition, with the ghost fermions carrying neither spin nor charge, but minimally coupled to $(U(1) \times U(1))/Z_2$ or $(SU(2) \times U(1))/Z_2$ gauge fields.
• The $(U(1) \times U(1))/Z_2$ case describes simultaneous Kondo breakdown and onset of magnetic order: the two gauge fields induce nearly equal attractive and repulsive interactions between ghost Fermi surface excitations, and this competition controls the quantum criticality.