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Abstract We model the pseudogap state of the hole- and electron-doped cuprates as a metal with hole and/or electron pocket Fermi surfaces. In the absence of long-range antiferromagnetism, such Fermi surfaces violate the Luttinger requirement of enclosing the same area as free electrons at the same density. Using the Ancilla theory of such a pseudogap state, we describe the onset of conventionald-wave superconductivity by the condensation of a chargeeHiggs boson transforming as a fundamental under the emergent SU(2) gauge symmetry of a backgroundπ-flux spin liquid. In all cases, we find that thed-wave superconductor has gapless Bogoliubov quasiparticles at 4 nodal points on the Brillouin zone diagonals with significant velocity anisotropy, just as in the BCS state. This includes the case of the electron-doped pseudogap metal with only electron pockets centered at wavevectors (π, 0), (0, π), and an electronic gap along the zone diagonals. Remarkably, in this case, too, gapless nodal Bogoliubov quasiparticles emerge within the gap at 4 points along the zone diagonals upon the onset of superconductivity. 

A long-standing problem in the study of the under-hole-doped cuprates has been the description of the Fermi surfaces underlying the high magnetic field quantum oscillations, and their connection to the higher temperature pseudogap metal. Harrison and Sebastian [Phys. Rev. Lett.106, 226402 (2011)] proposed that the pseudogap “Fermi arcs” are reconstructed into an electron pocket by field-induced charge density wave order. But computations on such a model [Zhang and Mei,Europhys. Lett.114, 47008 (2016)] show an unobserved additional oscillation frequency from a Fermi surface arising from the backsides of the hole pockets completing the Fermi arcs. We describe a transition from a fractionalized Fermi liquid (FL*) model of the pseudogap metal, to a metal with bidirectional charge density wave order without fractionalization. We show that the confinement of the fermionic spinon excitations of the FL* across this transition can eliminate the unobserved oscillation frequency. 

We consider a SU(2) lattice gauge theory on the square lattice, with a single fundamental complex fermion and a single fundamental complex boson on each lattice site. Projective symmetries of the gauge-charged fermions are chosen so that they match with those of the spinons of the $\pi$-flux spin liquid. Global symmetries of all gauge-invariant observables are chosen to match with those of the particle-hole symmetric electronic Hubbard model at half-filling. Consequently, both the fundamental fermion and fundamental boson move in an average background $\pi$-flux, their gauge-invariant composite is the physical electron, and eliminating gauge fields in a strong gauge-coupling expansion yields an effective extended Hubbard model for the electrons. The SU(2) gauge theory displays several confining/Higgs phases: a nodal $d$-wave superconductor, and states with Néel, valence-bond solid, charge, or staggered current orders. There are also a number of quantum phase transitions between these phases that are very likely described by $(2+1)$-dimensional deconfined conformal gauge theories, and we present large flavor expansions for such theories. These include the phenomenologically attractive case of a transition between a conventional insulator with a charge gap and Néel order, and a conventional $d$-wave superconductor with gapless Bogoliubov quasiparticles at four nodal points in the Brillouin zone. We also apply our approach to the honeycomb lattice, where we find a bicritical point at the junction of Néel, valence bond solid (Kekulé), and Dirac semimetal phases. Published by the American Physical Society2024