Quantum Criticality in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Itinerant Antiferromagnets

Quasi-two-dimensional itinerant fermions in the antiferromagnetic (AFM) quantum-critical region of their phase diagram, such as in the Fe-based superconductors or in some of the heavy-fermion compounds, exhibit a resistivity varying linearly with temperature and a contribution to specific heat or thermopower proportional to TlnT. It is shown, here, that a generic model of itinerant anti-ferromagnet can be canonically transformed so that its critical fluctuations around the AFM-vector Q can be obtained from the fluctuations in the long wavelength limit of a dissipative quantum XY model. The fluctuations of the dissipative quantum XY model in 2D have been evaluated recently, and in a large regime of parameters, they are determined, not by renormalized spin fluctuations, but by topological excitations. In this regime, the fluctuations are separable in their spatial and temporal dependence and have a spatial correlation length which is proportional to the logarithm of the temporal correlation length, i.e., for some purposes, the effective dynamic exponent z=∞. The time dependence gives ω/T scaling at criticality. The observed resistivity and entropy then follow. Several predictions to test the theory are also given.