We study the spectral function of a two-dimensional superconductor in a regime of strong phase fluctuations. Although the developed approach is valid for any symmetry, we concentrate on
d-wave superconductors. We obtain analytical expressions for the single electron Green's function below the transition temperature and have worked out a way to extrapolate it for a finite temperatures above
Tc. The suggested approach is easily generalizable for other models with critical fluctuations.
We compute the single particle spectral function of a Bose liquid on a lattice, at integer filling, close to the superfluid-Mott transition. We use a `static path approximation' that retains all the classical thermal fluctuations in the problem, and a real space implementation of the random phase approximation (RPA) for the Green's functions on the thermally fluctuating backgrounds. This leads to the standard RPA answers in the ground state but captures the progressive damping of the excitations with increasing temperature. We focus on the momentum resolved lineshape across the superfluid to Bose liquid thermal transition. In the superfluid regime we observe a gapped `amplitude' mode, and gapless `phase' modes of positive and negative energy. The dispersion and weight of these modes changes with interaction but are almost temperature independent, even into the normal state, except near critical coupling. The damping of the modes varies roughly as
Tαfk, where
T is the temperature and
k the momentum, with
α∼0.5 and
fk having non trivial momentum dependence. The Mott phase has gapped dispersive spectra. Near critical coupling the thermal Bose `liquid' is gapped, with progressive widening of the gap with increasing temperature, a feature that it shares with the Mott insulator.
One of the fundamental questions about high-temperature cuprate superconductors is the size of the Fermi surface underlying the superconducting state. By analyzing the single-particle spectral function for the Fermi-Hubbard model as a function of repulsion
U and chemical potential $\ensuremath{\mu}$, we find that the Fermi surface in the normal state undergoes a transition from a large Fermi surface matching the Luttinger volume as expected in a Fermi liquid, to a Fermi surface that encloses fewer electrons that we dub the ``Luttinger breaking'' phase, as the Mott insulator is approached. This transition into a non-Fermi-liquid phase that violates the Luttinger count occurs at a critical density in the absence of any other broken symmetry. We obtain the Fermi-surface contour from the spectral weight ${A}_{\mathbf{k}}(\ensuremath{\omega}=0)$ and from an analysis of the singularities of the Green's function
ReGk(E=0), calculated using determinantal quantum Monte Carlo and analytic continuation methods. We discuss our numerical results in connection with experiments on Hall measurements, scanning tunneling spectroscopy, and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
The crossover from weak to strong coupling for a three-dimensional continuum model of fermions interacting via an attractive contact potential is studied above the superconducting critical temperature
Tc. The pair-fluctuation propagator, the one-loop self-energy, and the spectral function are investigated in a systematic way from the superconducting fluctuation regime (weak coupling) to the bosonic regime (strong coupling). Analytic and numerical results are reported. In the strong-coupling regime, where the pair fluctuation propagator has bosonic character, two quite different peaks appear in the spectral function at a given wave vector, a broad one at negative frequencies and a narrow one at positive frequencies. The broad peak is asymmetric about its maximum, with its spectral weight decreasing by increasing coupling and temperature. In this regime, two crossover temperatures
T1∗ (at which the two peaks in the spectral function merge in one peak) and
T0∗ (at which the maximum of the lower peak crosses zero frequency) can be identified, with ${T}_{c}\ensuremath{\ll}{T}_{0}^{*}<{T}_{1}^{*}.$ By decreasing coupling, the two-peak structure evolves smoothly. In the weak-coupling regime, where the fluctuation propagator has diffusive Ginzburg-Landau character, the overall line shape of the spectral function is more symmetric and the two crossover temperatures approach
Tc. The analysis of the spectral function identifies specific features which allow one to distinguish by ARPES whether a system is in the weak- or strong-coupling regime. Connection of the results of our analysis with the phenomenology of cuprate superconductors is also attempted.
We investigate the impact of quantum and thermal phase fluctuations on the suppression of superconducting order in two-dimensional systems. Within the two-dimensional quantum XY model in the phase representation, where on-site interaction terms govern quantum phase fluctuations, we perform extensive path-integral quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The resulting temperature-interaction phase diagram establishes the presence of a well-defined critical line ending at a quantum critical point at vanishing temperature with no indication of reentrant behavior. We further demonstrate that the resistance above the critical line reproduces the two expected different critical behaviors. For stronger interactions, above the quantum critical point, the system exhibits a crossover to an insulating regime at low temperatures. Finally, Monte Carlo calculations of current-current correlation functions enable us to extract the frequency-dependent conductivity in both superconducting and normal regimes, revealing a finite-frequency response that we attribute to quantum phase fluctuations.
The effect of static fluctuations in the phase of the order parameter on the normal and superconducting properties of a 2D system with attractive four-fermion interaction is studied. Analytic expressions for the fermion Green’s function, its spectral density, and the density of states are derived in the approximation where the coupling between the spin and charge degrees of freedom is neglected. The resulting single-particle Green’s function clearly demonstrates a non-Fermi-liquid behavior. The results show that as the temperature increases through the 2D critical temperature, the widths of the quasiparticle peaks broaden significantly.