We study single-electron spectral functions in a quantum dimer model introduced by Punk, Allais, and Sachdev in Ref. [M. Punk, A. Allais, and S. Sachdev, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112, 9552 (2015)]. The Hilbert space of this model is spanned by hard-core coverings of the square lattice with two types of dimers: ordinary bosonic spin singlets, as well as fermionic dimers carrying charge +e and spin 1/2, which can be viewed as bound states of spinons and holons in a doped resonating valence bond (RVB) liquid. This model realizes a metallic phase with topological order and captures several properties of the pseudogap phase in hole-doped cuprates, such as a reconstructed Fermi surface with small hole pockets and a highly anisotropic quasiparticle residue in the absence of any broken symmetries. Using a combination of exact diagonalization and analytical methods, we compute electron spectral functions and show that this model indeed exhibits a sizable antinodal pseudogap, with a momentum dependence deviating from a simple $d$-wave form, in accordance with experiments on underdoped cuprates.

• Received 11 October 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.075144