Emergence of non-Fermi-liquid behavior due to Fermi surface reconstruction in the underdoped cuprate superconductors

We present an intermediate coupling scenario together with a model analytic solution where the non-Fermi-liquid behavior in the underdoped cuprates emerges through the mechanism of Fermi surface (FS) reconstruction. Even though the fluctuation spectrum remains nearly isotropic, FS reconstruction driven by a density wave order breaks the lattice symmetry and induces a strong momentum dependence in the self-energy. As the doping is reduced to half-filling, we find that quasiparticle (QP) dispersion becomes essentially unrenormalized, but in sharp contrast the QP spectral weight renormalizes to nearly zero. This opposite doping evolution of the renormalization factors for QP dispersion and spectral weight conspires in such a way that the specific heat remains Fermi liquid like at all dopings in accord with experiments.