Thermal Phase Transition of Three Dimensional Orthogonal Metals

Abstract

Orthogonal metals provide a paradigmatic example of strongly entangled metallic states whose transport and thermodynamic properties resemble those of conventional Fermi liquids, while their single-electron excitations remain fundamentally distinct. Despite considerable interest in their unusual ground-state properties, orthogonal metals in three spatial dimensions and their finite-temperature behavior remain relatively unexplored. Here, we investigate a three-dimensional orthogonal metal and characterize the thermodynamic and spectroscopic signatures associated with its finite-temperature phase transition. Starting from a simple model of fermions coupled to spin degrees of freedom, we perturbatively demonstrate that the thermal transition known to occur in the purely bosonic limit persists in the presence of coupling to a gapless Fermi surface. We then examine physical observables that change prominently between the coherent and orthogonal-metal regimes. In particular, we calculate the evolution of the physical-electron spectral function and identify characteristic signatures in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. We find a pronounced contrast in low-energy spectral weight between the coherent and orthogonal-metal regimes without requiring conventional symmetry-breaking order. Our results establish finite-temperature orthogonal-metal physics as a possible mechanism for pseudogap-like behavior in three-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional layered materials with non-negligible interlayer hopping, which may be applied to the recent experiments in $\mathrm{Sr_2 VO_3 Fe As}$.