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We study a model of mesoscale superconducting puddles in a metal, represented as dynamical impurities interacting with a finite number of electronic channels via Andreev and normal scattering. We identify conditions under which the collection of puddles make a T-linear contribution to the resistivity and a T ln(1/T ) to the specific heat and thermopower. This behavior emerges in an intermediate temperature range that extends from an upper energy scale set by the renormalized charging energy of the puddles, and down to an exponentially small scale associated with a charge-Kondo crossover, provided that the number of electronic channels interacting with the puddle is large. The phenomenology of our model resembles the apparent extended strange metal regime observed in overdoped cuprates which exhibits T-linear resistivity at low T over a finite range of doping. We also propose to engineer a strange metal from suitably designed superconducting grains in a metallic matrix. 

In devices based on two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs), gate electrodes can be used to tune the electronic properties by controlling the electron density. Despite the prevalence of such gated systems, the properties of 2DEGs in these environments remain poorly understood quantitatively. To address this, we have studied the 2DEG in a dual-gate geometry using quantum Monte Carlo simulations alongside simpler approximate methods, and we have mapped out the phase diagram of the gated 2DEG as a function of electron density and gate distance. We find that the Wigner crystal is unstable at all densities when the gates are sufficiently close to the 2DEG, and we identify the critical gate distance at which the Wigner crystal phase appears. For larger gate separations, we determine the phase boundary for the reentrant crystal to liquid transition that occurs with decreasing density. Our Letter is particularly relevant to Wigner crystal phases recently observed in a variety of gated two-dimensional materials. 

A quantum spin liquid (QSL) is an exotic insulating phase with emergent gauge fields and fractionalized excitations. However, the unambiguous demonstration of the existence of a QSL in a “nonengineered” microscopic model (or in any material) remains challenging. Here, using numerically exact sign-problem-free quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we show that a QSL arises in a nonengineered electron–phonon model. Specifically, we investigate the ground-state phase diagram of the bond Su–Schrieffer–Heeger model on a 2D triangular lattice at (one electron per site), which we show includes a QSL phase which is fully gapped, exhibits no symmetry-breaking order, and supports deconfined fractionalized holon excitations. This suggests promising routes for finding QSLs in realistic materials and high-T_csuperconductivity by lightly doping them. 

By explicit microscopic construction involving a mapping to a quantum vertex model subject to the “ice rule,” we show that an electronically “trivial” band insulator with suitable vibrational (phonon) degrees of freedom can host a “resonating valence-bond” state—a quantum phase with emergent gauge fields. This type of band insulator is identifiable by the existence of emergent gapless “photon” modes and deconfined excitations, the latter of which carry nonquantized mobile charges. We suggest that such phases may exist in the quantum regimes of various nearly ferroelectric materials. 

The properties of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in a semiconductor host with two valleys related by an underlying C4 rotational symmetry are studied using Hartree-Fock and various other many-body approaches. A familiar artifact of the HF approach is a degeneracy between the valley-polarized-"Ising nematic"-and spin-polarized-ferromagnetic-phases, which is inconsistent with recent variational Monte Carlo (VMC) results. Correlation effects, computed either within the random phase approximation (RPA) or the T-matrix approximation, enhance the valley susceptibility relative to the spin susceptibility. Extrapolating the results to finite interaction strength, we find a direct first-order transition from a symmetry-unbroken state to a spinunpolarized Ising nematic fluid with full valley polarization, in qualitative agreement with VMC. The RPA results are also reminiscent of experiments on the corresponding 2DEG in AlAs heterostructures. 

We consider optical response in multiband, multilayer two-dimensional superconductors. Within a simple model, we show that linear response to AC gating can detect collective modes of the condensate, such as Leggett and clapping modes. We show how trigonal warping of the superconducting order parameter can help facilitate detection of clapping modes. Taking rhombohedral trilayer graphene as an example, we consider several possible pairing mechanisms and show that all-electronic mechanisms may produce in-gap clapping modes. These modes, if present, should be detectable in the absorption of microwaves applied via the gate electrodes, which are necessary to enable superconductivity in this and many other settings; their detection would constitute strong evidence for unconventional pairing. Last, we show that absorption at frequencies above the superconducting gap $2\left|\mathrm{\Delta }\right|$also contains a wealth of information about the gap structure. Our results suggest that linear spectroscopy can be a powerful tool for the characterization of unconventional two-dimensional superconductors. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

Many seemingly contradictory experimental findings concerning the superconducting state in Sr2RuO4 can be accounted for on the basis of a conjectured accidental degeneracy between two patterns of pairing that are unrelated to each other under the (D4h) symmetry of the crystal: a dx2-y2-wave (B1g) and a gxy(x2-y2)-wave (A2g) superconducting state. In this paper, we propose a generic multiband model in which the g-wave pairing involving the xz and yz orbitals arises from second-nearest-neighbor BCS channel effective interactions. Even if timereversal symmetry is broken in a d + ig state, such a superconductor remains gapless with a Bogoliubov Fermi surface that approximates a (vertical) line node. The model gives rise to a strain-dependent splitting between the critical temperature Tc and the time-reversal symmetry-breaking temperature TTRSB that is qualitatively similar to some of the experimental observations in Sr2RuO4.