Critical spin fluctuations across the superconducting dome in La_2-xSr_xCuO₄

Overdoped cuprate superconductors are strange metals above their superconducting transition temperature. In such materials, the electrical resistivity has a strong linear dependence on temperature (T) and electrical current is not carried by electron quasiparticles as in conventional metals. Here we demonstrate that the strange metal behavior co-exists with strongly temperature-dependent critical spin fluctuations showing dynamical scaling across the cuprate phase diagram. Our neutron scattering observations and the strange metal behavior are consistent with a spin density wave quantum phase transition in a metal with spatial disorder in the tuning parameter. Numerical computations on a Yukawa-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model yield an extended `Griffiths phase' with scaling properties in agreement with observations, establishing that low-energy spin excitations and spatial disorder are central to the strange metal behavior.