- Open Access
Strange Metals and Planckian Transport in a Gapless Phase from Spatially Random Interactions
Phys. Rev. X 15, 031064 – Published 8 September, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/611k-yxb9
Abstract
“Strange” metals that do not follow the predictions of Fermi liquid theory are prevalent in materials that feature superconductivity arising from electron interactions. In recent years, it has been hypothesized that spatial randomness in electron interactions must play a crucial role in strange metals for their hallmark linear-in-temperature () resistivity to survive down to low temperatures where phonon and umklapp processes are ineffective, as is observed in experiments. However, a clear picture of how this happens has not yet been provided in a realistic model free from artificial constructions, such as large- limits and replica tricks. We study a realistic model of two-dimensional metals with spatially random antiferromagnetic interactions in a nonperturbative regime, using numerically exact high-performance, large-scale hybrid Monte Carlo simulation and exact averages over the quenched spatial randomness. Our simulations reproduce strange metals’ key experimental signature of linear-in- resistivity with a universal “Planckian” transport scattering rate that is independent of coupling constants. We further find that strange metallicity in these systems is not associated with a quantum critical point and, instead, arises from a phase of matter with gapless antiferromagnetic fluctuations that lacks long-range correlations and spans an extended region of parameter space: A feature that is also observed in several experiments. These gapless antiferromagnetic fluctuations take the form of spatially localized overdamped modes, whose presence could possibly be detected using recently developed nanoscale magnetometry methods. Our work paves the way for an eventual microscopic understanding of the role of spatial disorder in determining important properties of correlated-electron materials.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Popular Summary
Strange metals are mysterious states that appear in high-temperature superconductors above their superconducting transition temperature. They are unusual because their electrical resistance grows linearly with temperature, and the electron scattering rate is set by a universal ratio of temperature to fundamental constants. Even more striking, these properties are robust against changes in chemical composition and persist over large regions of the material’s phase diagram. In this work, we introduce a simple but realistic model that explains these puzzling features and provides a framework for understanding strange metals.
Our model describes a 2D system of electrons interacting with each other through magnetic fluctuations, a hallmark of high-temperature superconductors. To capture the effects of chemical disorder, we allow these interactions to be spatially heterogeneous. We then solve the model exactly using high-performance quantum Monte Carlo simulations, which can account for nonperturbative interaction effects that analytical methods miss. The simulations reveal that the interactions generate spatially localized magnetic modes, and it is the scattering of electrons off these modes that gives rise to the strange metal behavior. This mechanism naturally explains the linear temperature dependence of resistance and the universality of the scattering rate.
Our results suggest that these localized magnetic modes could be directly detected using advances in nanoscale magnetometry, opening the possibility of experimental validation. More broadly, the model provides a foundation for future computational and theoretical studies on how strange metals evolve into superconducting states, bringing us closer to solving the long-standing mystery of high-temperature superconductivity.
Article Text
References (94)
- D. Chowdhury, A. Georges, O. Parcollet, and S. Sachdev, Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models and beyond: Window into non-Fermi liquids, Rev. Mod. Phys. 94, 035004 (2022).
- A. Legros, S. Benhabib, W. Tabis, F. Laliberté, M. Dion, M. Lizaire, B. Vignolle, D. Vignolles, H. Raffy, Z. Z. Li, P. Auban-Senzier, N. Doiron-Leyraud, P. Fournier, D. Colson, L. Taillefer, and C. Proust, Universal -linear resistivity and Planckian dissipation in overdoped cuprates, Nat. Phys. 15, 142 (2019).
- D. H. Nguyen, A. Sidorenko, M. Taupin, G. Knebel, G. Lapertot, E. Schuberth, and S. Paschen, Superconductivity in an extreme strange metal, Nat. Commun. 12, 4341 (2021).
- I. M. Hayes, R. D. McDonald, N. P. Breznay, T. Helm, P. J. W. Moll, M. Wartenbe, A. Shekhter, and J. G. Analytis, Scaling between magnetic field and temperature in the high-temperature superconductor , Nat. Phys. 12, 916 (2016).
- X. Jiang et al., Interplay between superconductivity and the strange-metal state in , Nat. Phys. 19, 365 (2023).
- K. Lee, B. Y. Wang, M. Osada, B. H. Goodge, T. C. Wang, Y. Lee, S. Harvey, W. J. Kim, Y. Yu, C. Murthy, S. Raghu, L. F. Kourkoutis, and H. Y. Hwang, Linear-in-temperature resistivity for optimally superconducting , Nature (London) 619, 288 (2023).
- A. Jaoui, I. Das, G. Di Battista, J. Díez-Mérida, X. Lu, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, H. Ishizuka, L. Levitov, and D. K. Efetov, Quantum critical behaviour in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, Nat. Phys. 18, 633 (2022).
- L. Ye, S. Fang, M. Kang, J. Kaufmann, Y. Lee, C. John, P. M. Neves, S. F. Zhao, J. Denlinger, C. Jozwiak et al., Hopping frustration-induced flat band and strange metallicity in a kagome metal, Nat. Phys. 20, 610 (2024).
- C. Girod et al., Normal state specific heat in the cuprate superconductors and near the critical point of the pseudogap phase, Phys. Rev. B 103, 214506 (2021).
- B. Michon, C. Berthod, C. W. Rischau, A. Ataei, L. Chen, S. Komiya, S. Ono, L. Taillefer, D. van der Marel, and A. Georges, Reconciling scaling of the optical conductivity of cuprate superconductors with Planckian resistivity and specific heat, Nat. Commun. 14, 3033 (2023).
- S. Sachdev and B. Keimer, Quantum criticality, Phys. Today 64, No. 2, 29 (2011).
- R. A. Cooper, Y. Wang, B. Vignolle, O. J. Lipscombe, S. M. Hayden, Y. Tanabe, T. Adachi, Y. Koike, M. Nohara, H. Takagi, C. Proust, and N. E. Hussey, Anomalous criticality in the electrical resistivity of , Science 323, 603 (2009).
- R. L. Greene, P. R. Mandal, N. R. Poniatowski, and T. Sarkar, The strange metal state of the electron-doped cuprates, Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 11, 213 (2020).
- M. Christos, D. G. Joshi, S. Sachdev, and M. Tikhanovskaya, Critical metallic phase in the overdoped random model, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119, e2206921119 (2022).
- J. A. Hertz, Quantum critical phenomena, Phys. Rev. B 14, 1165 (1976).
- A. J. Millis, Effect of a nonzero temperature on quantum critical points in itinerant fermion systems, Phys. Rev. B 48, 7183 (1993).
- J. Ziman, Electrons and Phonons: The Theory of Transport Phenomena in Solids (Oxford University Press, New York, 2001).
- S. A. Hartnoll, A. Lucas, and S. Sachdev, Holographic Quantum Matter (MIT Press, Cambridge, England, 2018).
- E. E. Aldape, T. Cookmeyer, A. A. Patel, and E. Altman, Solvable theory of a strange metal at the breakdown of a heavy Fermi liquid, Phys. Rev. B 105, 235111 (2022).
- A. A. Patel, H. Guo, I. Esterlis, and S. Sachdev, Universal theory of strange metals from spatially random interactions, Science 381, 790 (2023).
- L. Chen, D. T. Lowder, E. Bakali, A. M. Andrews, W. Schrenk, M. Waas, R. Svagera, G. Eguchi, L. Prochaska, Y. Wang, C. Setty, S. Sur, Q. Si, S. Paschen, and D. Natelson, Shot noise in a strange metal, Science 382, 907 (2023).
- C. Li, D. Valentinis, A. A. Patel, H. Guo, J. Schmalian, S. Sachdev, and I. Esterlis, Strange metal and superconductor in the two-dimensional Yukawa-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 186502 (2024).
- A. Nikolaenko, S. Sachdev, and A. A. Patel, Theory of shot noise in strange metals, Phys. Rev. Res. 5, 043143 (2023).
- A. A. Patel, P. Lunts, and S. Sachdev, Localization of overdamped bosonic modes and transport in strange metals, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121, e2402052121 (2024).
- S. Duane, A. Kennedy, B. J. Pendleton, and D. Roweth, Hybrid Monte Carlo, Phys. Lett. B 195, 216 (1987).
- P. Lunts, M. S. Albergo, and M. Lindsey, Non-Hertz-Millis scaling of the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal via scalable hybrid Monte Carlo, Nat. Commun. 14, 2547 (2023).
- E. Berg, M. A. Metlitski, and S. Sachdev, Sign-problem-free quantum Monte Carlo of the onset of antiferromagnetism in metals, Science 338, 1606 (2012).
- J. A. Hoyos, C. Kotabage, and T. Vojta, Effects of dissipation on a quantum critical point with disorder, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 230601 (2007).
- T. Vojta, C. Kotabage, and J. A. Hoyos, Infinite-randomness quantum critical points induced by dissipation, Phys. Rev. B 79, 024401 (2009).
- C. Varma, P. B. Littlewood, S. Schmitt-Rink, E. Abrahams, and A. Ruckenstein, Phenomenology of the normal state of high-temperature superconductors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 63, 1996 (1989).
- J. A. N. Bruin, H. Sakai, R. S. Perry, and A. P. Mackenzie, Similarity of scattering rates in metals showing -linear resistivity, Science 339, 804 (2013).
- M. Zhu, D. Voneshen, S. Raymond, O. Lipscombe, C. Tam, and S. Hayden, Spin fluctuations associated with the collapse of the pseudogap in a cuprate superconductor, Nat. Phys. 19, 99 (2023).
- Y. Nakajima, T. Metz, C. Eckberg, K. Kirshenbaum, A. Hughes, R. Wang, L. Wang, S. R. Saha, I.-L. Liu, N. P. Butch, D. Campbell, Y. S. Eo, D. Graf, Z. Liu, S. V. Borisenko, P. Y. Zavalij, and J. Paglione, Quantum-critical scale invariance in a transition metal alloy, Commun. Phys. 3, 181 (2020).
- A. Abanov, A. V. Chubukov, and J. Schmalian, Quantum-critical theory of the spin-fermion model and its application to cuprates: Normal state analysis, Adv. Phys. 52, 119 (2003).
- A. Abanov and A. V. Chubukov, Spin-fermion model near the quantum critical point: One-loop renormalization group results, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5608 (2000).
- M. A. Metlitski and S. Sachdev, Quantum phase transitions of metals in two spatial dimensions. II. spin density wave order, Phys. Rev. B 82, 075128 (2010).
- A. Schlief, P. Lunts, and S.-S. Lee, Exact critical exponents for the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal in two dimensions, Phys. Rev. X 7, 021010 (2017).
- P. Lunts, A. Schlief, and S.-S. Lee, Emergence of a control parameter for the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal, Phys. Rev. B 95, 245109 (2017).
- A. Schlief, P. Lunts, and S.-S. Lee, Noncommutativity between the low-energy limit and integer dimension limits in the expansion: A case study of the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal, Phys. Rev. B 98, 075140 (2018).
- C. Bauer, Y. Schattner, S. Trebst, and E. Berg, Hierarchy of energy scales in an O(3) symmetric antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal: A Monte Carlo study, Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 023008 (2020).
- H. Ballesteros, L. Fernández, V. Martín-Mayor, A. Muñoz Sudupe, G. Parisi, and J. Ruiz-Lorenzo, The four-dimensional site-diluted Ising model: A finite-size scaling study, Nucl. Phys. B512, 681 (1998).
- R. Sknepnek and T. Vojta, Smeared phase transition in a three-dimensional Ising model with planar defects: Monte Carlo simulations, Phys. Rev. B 69, 174410 (2004).
- E. Berg, S. Lederer, Y. Schattner, and S. Trebst, Monte Carlo studies of quantum critical metals, Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 10, 63 (2019).
- N. Bashan, E. Tulipman, J. Schmalian, and E. Berg, Tunable non-Fermi liquid phase from coupling to two-level systems, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 236501 (2024).
- E. Tulipman, N. Bashan, J. Schmalian, and E. Berg, Solvable models of two-level systems coupled to itinerant electrons: Robust non-Fermi liquid and quantum critical pairing, Phys. Rev. B 110, 155118 (2024).
- D. S. Fisher, Random transverse field Ising spin chains, Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 534 (1992).
- D. S. Fisher, Critical behavior of random transverse-field Ising spin chains, Phys. Rev. B 51, 6411 (1995).
- O. Motrunich, S.-C. Mau, D. A. Huse, and D. S. Fisher, Infinite-randomness quantum Ising critical fixed points, Phys. Rev. B 61, 1160 (2000).
- V. Dobrosavljević and E. Miranda, Absence of conventional quantum phase transitions in itinerant systems with disorder, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 187203 (2005).
- M. J. Case and V. Dobrosavljević, Quantum critical behavior of the cluster glass phase, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 147204 (2007).
- M. Zhu, D. J. Voneshen, S. Raymond, O. J. Lipscombe, C. C. Tam, and S. M. Hayden, Spin fluctuations associated with the collapse of the pseudogap in a cuprate superconductor, Nat. Phys. 19, 99 (2023).
- P. A. Lee and T. V. Ramakrishnan, Disordered electronic systems, Rev. Mod. Phys. 57, 287 (1985).
- S. Sachdev, Quantum Phases of Matter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2023).
- S. Sachdev, Quantum Phase Transitions (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2011).
- J. Fournier, P.-O. Downey, C.-D. Hébert, M. Charlebois, and A.-M. Tremblay, Two -linear scattering-rate regimes in the triangular lattice Hubbard model, SciPost Phys. 17, 072 (2024).
- W. Wú, X. Wang, and A.-M. Tremblay, Non-Fermi liquid phase and linear-in-temperature scattering rate in overdoped two-dimensional Hubbard model, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119, e2115819119 (2022).
- P. T. Dumitrescu, N. Wentzell, A. Georges, and O. Parcollet, Planckian metal at a doping-induced quantum critical point, Phys. Rev. B 105, L180404 (2022).
- D. J. Scalapino, S. R. White, and S. Zhang, Insulator, metal, or superconductor: The criteria, Phys. Rev. B 47, 7995 (1993).
- C. Murthy, A. Pandey, I. Esterlis, and S. A. Kivelson, A stability bound on the T-linear resistivity of conventional metals, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 120, e2216241120 (2023).
- A. Hardy, O. Parcollet, A. Georges, and A. A. Patel, Enhanced strange metallicity due to Hubbard- Coulomb repulsion, Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 036502 (2025).
- A. A. Patel and M. S. Albergo, Multigrid preconditioners for correlated electron problems at finite density (to be published).
- R. Ansorge, Programming in Parallel with CUDA: A Practical Guide (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2022).
- C. Chu, L. Deng, and B. Lv, Hole-doped cuprate high temperature superconductors, Physica (Amsterdam) 514C, 290 (2015).
- R. L. Greene, P. R. Mandal, N. R. Poniatowski, and T. Sarkar, The strange metal state of the electron-doped cuprates, Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 11, 213 (2020).
- Y. Ando, A. N. Lavrov, S. Komiya, K. Segawa, and X. F. Sun, Mobility of the doped holes and the antiferromagnetic correlations in underdoped high- cuprates, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 017001 (2001).
- J. He, C. R. Rotundu, M. S. Scheurer, Y. He, M. Hashimoto, K.-J. Xu, Y. Wang, E. W. Huang, T. Jia, S. Chen, B. Moritz, D. Lu, Y. S. Lee, T. P. Devereaux, and Z. X. Shen, Fermi surface reconstruction in electron-doped cuprates without antiferromagnetic long-range order, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116, 3449 (2019).
- F. Boschini, M. Zonno, E. Razzoli, R. P. Day, M. Michiardi, B. Zwartsenberg, P. Nigge, M. Schneider, E. H. da Silva Neto, A. Erb, S. Zhdanovich, A. K. Mills, G. Levy, C. Giannetti, D. J. Jones, and A. Damascelli, Emergence of pseudogap from short-range spin-correlations in electron-doped cuprates, npj Quantum Mater. 5, 6 (2020).
- G. Grissonnanche, Y. Fang, A. Legros, S. Verret, F. Laliberté, C. Collignon, J. Zhou, D. Graf, P. A. Goddard, L. Taillefer, and B. J. Ramshaw, Linear-in temperature resistivity from an isotropic Planckian scattering rate, Nature (London) 595, 667 (2021).
- A. Tyler and A. Mackenzie, Hall effect of single layer, tetragonal near optimal doping, Physica (Amsterdam) 282-287C, 1185 (1997).
- N. E. Hussey, H. Gordon-Moys, J. Kokalj, and R. H. McKenzie, Generic strange-metal behaviour of overdoped cuprates, J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 449, 012004 (2013).
- A. P. Mackenzie, S. R. Julian, D. C. Sinclair, and C. T. Lin, Normal-state magnetotransport in superconducting to millikelvin temperatures, Phys. Rev. B 53, 5848 (1996).
- M. Pelliccione, A. Jenkins, P. Ovartchaiyapong, C. Reetz, E. Emmanouilidou, N. Ni, and A. C. Bleszynski Jayich, Scanned probe imaging of nanoscale magnetism at cryogenic temperatures with a single-spin quantum sensor, Nat. Nanotechnol. 11, 700 (2016).
- T. Esat, D. Borodin, J. Oh, A. J. Heinrich, F. S. Tautz, Y. Bae, and R. Temirov, A quantum sensor for atomic-scale electric and magnetic fields, Nat. Nanotechnol. 19, 1466 (2024).
- G. Campi, A. Bianconi, N. Poccia, G. Bianconi, L. Barba, G. Arrighetti, D. Innocenti, J. Karpinski, N. D. Zhigadlo, S. M. Kazakov, M. Burghammer, M. v. Zimmermann, M. Sprung, and A. Ricci, Inhomogeneity of charge-density-wave order and quenched disorder in a high- superconductor, Nature (London) 525, 359 (2015).
- W. O. Tromp, T. Benschop, J.-F. Ge, I. Battisti, K. M. Bastiaans, D. Chatzopoulos, A. H. M. Vervloet, S. Smit, E. van Heumen, M. S. Golden, Y. Huang, T. Kondo, T. Takeuchi, Y. Yin, J. E. Hoffman, M. A. Sulangi, J. Zaanen, and M. P. Allan, Puddle formation and persistent gaps across the non-mean-field breakdown of superconductivity in overdoped , Nat. Mater. 22, 703 (2023).
- B. H. Goodge, D. J. Baek, and L. F. Kourkoutis, Atomic-resolution elemental mapping at cryogenic temperatures enabled by direct electron detection, arXiv:2007.09747.
- M. Kuwahara, Y. Takeda, K. Saitoh, T. Ujihara, H. Asano, T. Nakanishi, and N. Tanaka, Development of spin-polarized transmission electron microscope, J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 298, 012016 (2011).
- H. Nakajima, T. Morimoto, Y. Okigawa, T. Yamada, Y. Ikuta, K. Kawahara, H. Ago, and T. Okazaki, Imaging of local structures affecting electrical transport properties of large graphene sheets by lock-in thermography, Sci. Adv. 5, eaau3407 (2019).
- M. Frachet et al., Hidden magnetism at the pseudogap critical point of a cuprate superconductor, Nat. Phys. 16, 1064 (2020).
- D. J. Campbell, M. Frachet, V. Oliviero, T. Kurosawa, N. Momono, M. Oda, J. Chang, D. Vignolles, C. Proust, and D. LeBoeuf, Strange metal from spin fluctuations in a cuprate superconductor, arXiv:2412.03720.
- J. M. Tranquada, P. M. Lozano, J. Yao, G. D. Gu, and Q. Li, From nonmetal to strange metal at the stripe-percolation transition in , Phys. Rev. B 109, 184510 (2024).
- F. Rullier-Albenque, P. A. Vieillefond, H. Alloul, A. W. Tyler, P. Lejay, and J. F. Marucco, Universal depression by irradiation defects in underdoped and overdoped cuprates?, Europhys. Lett. 50, 81 (2000).
- R. Hlubina and T. M. Rice, Resistivity as a function of temperature for models with hot spots on the Fermi surface, Phys. Rev. B 51, 9253 (1995).
- Z. W. Anderson, M. Spaić, N. Biniskos, L. Thompson, B. Yu, J. Zwettler, Y. Liu, F. Ye, G. E. Granroth, M. Krogstad, R. Osborn, D. Pelc, and M. Greven, Bulk nanoscale structural correlations in a model cuprate superconductor, Phys. Rev. B 110, 214519 (2024).
- V. D. Neverov, A. E. Lukyanov, A. V. Krasavin, A. Vagov, and M. D. Croitoru, Correlated disorder as a way towards robust superconductivity, Commun. Phys. 5, 177 (2022).
- M. A. Clark, The rational hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm, Proc. Sci., LAT2006 (2006) 004 [arXiv:hep-lat/0610048].
- X. Deng, J. Mravlje, R. Žitko, M. Ferrero, G. Kotliar, and A. Georges, How bad metals turn good: Spectroscopic signatures of resilient quasiparticles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 086401 (2013).
- A. A. Patel and H. J. Changlani, Many-body energy invariant for -linear resistivity, Phys. Rev. B 105, L201108 (2022).
- H. U. Özdemir, V. Mishra, N. R. Lee-Hone, X. Kong, T. Berlijn, D. M. Broun, and P. J. Hirschfeld, Effect of realistic out-of-plane dopant potentials on the superfluid density of overdoped cuprates, Phys. Rev. B 106, 184510 (2022).
- J. Brannick, R. C. Brower, M. A. Clark, J. C. Osborn, and C. Rebbi, Adaptive multigrid algorithm for lattice QCD, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 041601 (2008).
- M. D. Hoffman and A. Gelman, The No-U-Turn Sampler: Adaptively setting path lengths in Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, J. Mach. Learn. Res. 15, 1593 (2014).
- B. Carpenter, A. Gelman, M. D. Hoffman, D. Lee, B. Goodrich, M. Betancourt, M. Brubaker, J. Guo, P. Li, and A. Riddell, Stan: A probabilistic programming language, J. Stat. Softw. 76, 1 (2017).
- N. Kavokine, M. Müller, A. Georges, and O. Parcollet, Exact numerical solution of the fully connected classical and quantum Heisenberg spin glass, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 016501 (2024).
Specificially, we use scipy.interpolate.UnivariateSpline and fit to Matsubara frequencies up to .
