We revisit the effective theory for fluctuating spin stripes coupled to a Fermi surface and consider the parameter regime where a spin-nematic phase intervenes between the spin-density-wave state and the symmetric state. It is shown that adding potential disorder to this theory, which acts as an unconventional type of random-field disorder, naturally gives rise to a phase diagram containing a quantum critical point that is described by the universal theory of strange metals with spatial disorder in both the magnitude and sign of the electron-boson coupling term [Patel et al., Science 381, 790 (2023)]. One difference compared with the original theory, however, is that, at nonzero temperatures, the disordered spin-stripe model automatically self-averages over the sign of the coupling. We also study the effects of thermal fluctuations in a phenomenological model for the disordered spin-density-wave state and find from Monte Carlo simulations that a short antiferromagnetic correlation length (order 4–5 lattice constants) already leads to pronounced Fermi arcs in the electronic spectral weight.

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• Charge density waves
• Critical phenomena
• Magnetic phase transitions
• Quantum phase transitions
• High-temperature superconductors