Competition of spinon Fermi surface and heavy Fermi liquid states from the periodic Anderson to the Hubbard model

We study a model of correlated electrons coupled by tunneling to a layer of itinerant metallic electrons, which allows us to interpolate from a frustrated limit favorable to spin liquid states to a Kondo-lattice limit favorable to interlayer coherent heavy metallic states. We study the competition of the spinon Fermi-surface state and the interlayer coherent heavy Kondo metal that appears with increasing tunneling. Employing a slave rotor mean-field approach, we obtain a phase diagram and describe two regimes where the spin liquid state is destroyed by weak interlayer tunneling: (i) the Kondo limit in which the correlated electrons can be viewed as localized spin moments and (ii) near the Mott metal-insulator transition where the spinon Fermi surface transitions continuously into a Fermi liquid. We study the shape of local density of states (LDOS) spectra of the putative spin liquid layer in the heavy Fermi-liquid phase and describe the temperature dependence of its width arising from quasiparticle interactions and disorder effects throughout this phase diagram, in an effort to understand recent scanning tunneling microscopy experiments of the candidate spin liquid 1T-TaSe2 residing on metallic 1H-TaSe2. Comparison of the shape and temperature dependence of the theoretical and experimental LDOS suggests that this system is either close to the localized Kondo limit or in an intermediate coupling regime where the Kondo coupling and the Heisenberg exchange interaction are comparable.

Automated summary

The study explores the model of correlated electrons coupled with itinerant metallic electrons, examining the competition between spin liquid states and interlayer coherent heavy metallic states. The results suggest that weak interlayer tunneling can destroy the spin liquid state, leading to the emergence of Kondo metallic states or Fermi liquid transitions.