Strange metallicity in an antiferromagnetic quantum critical model: A sign-problem-free quantum Monte-Carlo study

Abstract: We compute transport and thermodynamic properties of a two-band spin-fermion model describing itinerant fermions in two dimensions interacting via $Z_2$ antiferromagnetic quantum critical fluctuations by means of a sign-problem-free quantum Monte-Carlo approach. We show that the phase diagram of this model indeed contains a $d$-wave superconducting phase at low enough temperatures. However, a crucial question that arises is whether a non-Fermi-liquid metallic regime exists above $T_c$ exhibiting hallmark strange-metal transport phenomenology. Interestingly, we find that this version of the model describes a non-Fermi-liquid metallic regime that displays an approximately $T$-linear resistivity above $T_c$ for a strong fermion-boson interaction. Using Nernst-Einstein relation, our QMC results also show that this strange metal phase exhibits a crossover from being characterized by a charge compressibility given approximately by $\chi_{c}\sim 1/T$ at high temperatures to being described by a charge diffusivity consistent with the scaling $D_{c}\sim 1/T$ at low temperatures. Therefore, our work adds support to the view that the $Z_2$ antiferromagnetic spin-fermion model at strong coupling can be considered a minimal model that describes both unconventional superconductivity and strange metallicity, which are fundamentally interconnected in many important strongly-correlated quantum materials.