We study the phase diagram of the frustrated t - t ' Hubbard model on the square lattice by using a novel variational wave function. Taking the clue from the backflow correlations that have been introduced long-time ago by Feynman and Cohen and have been used for describing various interacting systems on the continuum (like liquid 3 He, the electron jellium, and metallic Hydrogen), we consider many-body correlations to construct a suitable approximation for the ground state of this correlated model on the lattice. In this way, a very accurate ansatz can be achieved both at weak and strong coupling. We present the evidence that an insulating and non-magnetic phase can be stabilized at strong coupling and sufficiently large frustrating ratio t ' = t .
We show that backflow correlations in the variational wave function for the Hubbard model greatly improve the previous results given by the Slater-Jastrow state, usually considered in this context. We provide evidence that, within this approach, it is possible to have a satisfactory connection with the strong-coupling regime. Moreover, we show that, for the Hubbard model on the lattice, backflow correlations are essentially short range, inducing an effective attraction between empty (holons) and doubly occupied sites (doublons). In the presence of frustration, we report the evidence that the metal to Mott-insulator transition is marked by a discontinuity of the double occupancy, together with a similar discontinuity of the kinetic term that does not change the number of holons and doublons, while the other kinetic terms are continuous across the transition. Finally, we show the estimation of the charge gap, obtained by particle-hole excitations \`a la Feynman over the ground-state wave function.
Unique features of the nonmagnetic insulator phase are revealed, and the phase diagram of the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ Hubbard model containing the diagonal transfers ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ on a square lattice is presented. Using the path-integral renormalization group method, we find an antiferromagnetic phase for small next-nearest-neighbor transfer ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ and a stripe (or collinear) phase for large ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ in the Mott insulating region of the strong on-site interaction
U. For intermediate ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}∕t\ensuremath{\sim}0.7$ at large
U∕t>7, we find a longer-period antiferromagnetic-insulator phase with $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4$ structure. In the Mott insulating region, we also find a quantum spin liquid (in other words, a nonmagnetic insulator) phase near the Mott transition to paramagnetic metals for the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ Hubbard model on the square lattice as well as on the anisotropic triangular lattice. Correlated electrons often crystallize to the Mott insulator usually with some magnetic orders, whereas the ``quantum spin liquid" has been a long-sought issue. We report numerical evidence that a nonmagnetic insulating phase gets stabilized near the Mott transition with remarkable properties: The two-dimensional Mott insulators on geometrically frustrated lattices contain a phase with gapless spin excitations and degeneracy of the ground state in the whole Brillouin zone of the total momentum. The obtained vanishing spin renormalization factor suggests that spin excitations do not propagate coherently in contrast to conventional phases, where there exist either magnons in symmetry-broken phases or particle-hole excitations in paramagnetic metals. It imposes a constraint on the possible pictures of quantum spin liquids and supports an interpretation for the existence of an unconventional quantum liquid. The present concept is useful in analyzing a variety of experimental results in frustrated magnets including organic BEDT-TTF compounds and
3He atoms adsorbed on graphite.
We investigate the ground-state properties of two strongly-correlated systems: the two-dimensional
t−J model that can be used to study the high-temperature superconducting phase in the doped antiferromagnet, and the frustrated N\'eel antiferromagnet described by the
J1−J2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice, which is widely considered as the prototype model for spin frustration. In this thesis, we apply to these two systems state-of-the-art quantum Monte Carlo techniques, including the variational and the Green's function Monte Carlo with the fixed-node approximation. Few Lanczos steps are used to systematically improve the accuracy of the trial wave functions. By introducing a suitable regularization scheme for the variational calculations with few Lanczos steps, stable and controllable simulations can be performed up to very large cluster sizes with very good accuracy. In the two-dimensional
t−J model at
J/t=0.4, we show that the accuracy of the Gutzwiller-projected variational state (containing
dx2−y2 pairing) can be improved much by few Lanczos steps; in addition, the fixed-node Monte Carlo with these systematically improvable trial wave functions gives results that are comparable with the best accurate DMRG ones. Our main outcome is that the ground state is homogeneous and no evidence of stripes is detected around the doping
δ=1/8. Indeed, our best approximation to the ground state does not show any tendency towards charge inhomogeneity. Furthermore, our results show that a uniform state containing superconductivity and antiferromagnetism is stabilized at low hole doping, i.e.,
δ≲0.1. In the
J1−J2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice, we use the projected mean-field state that is built from Abrikosov fermions having a
Z2 gauge structure and four Dirac points in the spinon spectrum. No spin or dimer order is found in the strongly frustrated regime and our calculations imply that a spin liquid phase may faithfully represent the exact ground state around
J2/J1=0.5. The few Lanczos step technique is used to systematically improve the accuracy of the variational states both for the ground state and for few relevant low-energy excitations. This procedure allows us to estimate, in a valuable and systemic way, the spin gaps within thermodynamical limit and to show a solid evidence of an unconventional gapless excitation spectrum in the strongly frustrated regime, i.e.,
J2/J1≃0.5. In particular, we found gapless triplet excitations at momenta
(π,0) and
(0,π), which are compatible with the presence of four Dirac points at momenta
(±2π,±2π) in the spinon spectrum.
We investigate the properties of the frustrated underdoped Hubbard model on the square lattice using two complementary approaches, i.e., the dynamical cluster extension of the dynamical mean-field theory and the variational Monte Carlo simulations of Gutzwiller-Jastrow wave functions with backflow corrections. We compare and discuss data for the energy and the double occupancies, as obtained from both approaches. At small dopings, we observe a rapid crossover from a weakly correlated metal at low interaction strength
U to a non-Fermi-liquid correlated state with strong local spin correlations. Furthermore, we investigate the stability of the correlated state against phase separation. We observe phase separation only for large values of
U or very large frustration. No phase separation is present for the parameter range relevant for the cuprates.
We study the interplay between electron correlation and disorder in the two-dimensional Hubbard model at half filling by means of a variational wave function that can interpolate between Anderson and Mott insulators. We give a detailed description of our improved variational state and explain how the physics of the Anderson-Mott transition can be inferred from equal-time correlations functions, which can be easily computed within the variational Monte Carlo scheme. The ground-state phase diagram is worked out in both the paramagnetic and the magnetic sector. Whereas in the former a direct second-order Anderson-Mott transition is obtained, when magnetism is allowed variationally, we find evidence for the formation of local magnetic moments that order before the Mott transition. Although the localization length increases before the Mott transition, we have no evidence for the stabilization of a true metallic phase. The effect of a frustrating next-nearest-neighbor hopping ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ is also studied in some detail. In particular, we show that ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ has two primary effects. The first one is the narrowing of the stability region of the magnetic Anderson insulator, also leading to a first-order magnetic transition. The second and most important effect of a frustrating hopping term is the development of a ``glassy'' phase at strong couplings, where many paramagnetic states, with disordered local moments, may be stabilized.