Patel, AavishkarChowdhury, DebanjanAllais, AndreaSachdev, Subir2016-09-122016Patel, Aavishkar A., Debanjan Chowdhury, Andrea Allais, and Subir Sachdev. 2016. “Confinement Transition to Density Wave Order in Metallic Doped Spin Liquids.” Physical Review B 93 (16) (April 25). doi:10.1103/physrevb.93.165139.2469-9950http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:28409890Insulating quantum spin liquids can undergo a confinement transition to a valence bond solid via the condensation of topological excitations of the associated gauge theory. We extend the theory of such transitions to fractionalized Fermi liquids (FL*): these are metallic doped spin liquids in which the Fermi surfaces only have gauge neutral quasiparticles. Using insights from a duality transform on a doped quantum dimer model for the U(1)-FL* state, we show that projective symmetry group of the theory of the topological excitations remains unmodified, but the Fermi surfaces can lead to additional frustrating interactions. We propose a theory for the confinement transition of Z2-FL* states via the condensation of visons. A variety of confining, incommensurate density wave states are possible, including some that are similar to the incommensurate d-form factor density wave order observed in several recent experiments on the cuprate superconductors.en-USJournal Article2016-09-1210.1103/physrevb.93.165139