Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1205.2928 · Journal of Physics Condensed Matter

Local electronic nematicity in the two-dimensional one-band Hubbard model

Kun Fang, Gayanath Fernando, ARMEN N. KOCHARIAN

Published Apr 23, 2013• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Nematicity is a well-known property of liquid crystals and has been recently discussed in the context of strongly interacting electrons. An electronic nematic phase has been seen in many experiments in certain strongly correlated materials, in particular, in the pseudogap phase generic to many hole-doped cuprate superconductors. Recent measurements in high Tc superconductors have shown that even if the lattice is perfectly rotationally symmetric, the ground state can still have strongly nematic local properties. Our study of the two-dimensional one-band Hubbard model provides strong support for the recent experimental results on local rotational C4 symmetry breaking. The variational cluster approach is used here to show the possibility of an electronic nematic state and the proximity of the underlying symmetry-breaking ground state within the Hubbard model. We identify this nematic phase in the overdoped region and show that the local nematicity decreases with increasing electron filling. Our results also indicate that strong Coulomb interaction may drive the nematic phase into a phase similar to the stripe structure. The calculated spin (magnetic) correlation function in momentum space shows the effects resulting from real-space nematicity.

DOI
10.1088/0953-8984/25/20/205601

Related papers

Studies of Electronic Inhomogeneities in Strongly Correlated Systems Using Quantum Cluster Methods

Kun Fang

In order to understand various local phenomena related to electronic phase separation discovered recently in strongly correlated materials, quantum cluster methods are applied to a theoretical model, i.e., Hubbard model, which has successfully predicted basic properties of strongly correlated systems. Our calculations are performed at two levels: exact calculations based on the isolated small clusters via exact diagonalization and approximate calculations applied to large lattices using the variational cluster approximation (VCA).\nWe first study phase separation instabilities with the formation of a pairing gap in the two-dimensional Hubbard model for 8-site Betts clusters. The exact diagonalization method is applied to extract exact ground and excited states of the Hubbard model. The results show that the electronic states with one hole off half filling are unstable and they energetically prefer creating the spatial phase separation. The effect of next nearest hopping is also discussed in this part.\nWe studied the variation of the pairing when the out-of-plane correlation is present by adding an interacting apical site above the two-dimensional cluster plane. The calculations indicate that the out-of-plane correlation can be detrimental to the in-plane pairing effect. When it is not too strong to destroy electron pairs on the plane, the modulation of the apical site can drive the pairing gap to show a sinusoidal variation which is consistent with recent experimental discoveries.\nVariational cluster approximation is introduced to explore local properties of larger lattices. The local nematic state is studied in the square lattice using this method, which indicates that it is possible that the electronic states can locally break the C4 symmetry (90o$ rotational symmetry) to form a pattern where the electronic properties, such as charge and spin correlations, are different in x and y directions.\nThe spatial phase separation in the square and honeycomb lattices is also investigated by the variational cluster approximation. The study shows that Coulomb interaction and lattice geometry are both crucial for electronic phase separation. We propose that electronic phase separation is the result of an instability of the Fermi surface at the boundary of the first Brillouin zone of antiferromagnetic states.

•Jan 1, 2014•0 citations

Tendencies of enhanced electronic nematicity in the Hubbard model and a comparison with Raman scattering on high-temperature superconductors

Tianyi Liu, Daniel Jost, Brian Moritz +3 more

The pseudogap regime of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors is characterized by a variety of competing orders, the nature of which are still widely debated. Recent experiments have provided evidence for electron nematic order, in which the electron fluid breaks rotational symmetry while preserving translational invariance. Raman spectroscopy, with its ability to symmetry resolve low energy excitations, is a unique tool that can be used to assess nematic fluctuations and nematic ordering tendencies. Here we compare results from determinant quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the Hubbard model to experimental results from Raman spectroscopy in ${\mathrm{La}}_{2\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Sr}}_{x}{\mathrm{CuO}}_{4}$, which show a prominent increase in the ${B}_{1g}$ response around 10% hole doping as the temperature decreases, indicative of a rise in nematic fluctuations at low energy. Our results support a picture of nematic fluctuations with ${B}_{1g}$ symmetry occurring in underdoped cuprates, which may arise from melted stripes at elevated temperatures.

arXiv:2101.07486•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Apr 5, 2021•6 citations

Mott localisation, antiferromagnetism and nematic superconductivity in the extended Hubbard model with non-local pairing

ALESSANDRO GORI

High temperature superconductivity in copper oxides (cuprates) represents one of the most striking phenomena in condensed matter physics. These materials host superconducting states with the highest known critical temperatures, emerging upon doping antiferromagnetic insulator compounds. The antiferromagnetic (AF) insulating and superconducting (SC) phases defy standard descriptions in terms of band picture and conventional phonon-mediated superconductivity. In fact, these phenomena are genuine signatures of strong electronic correlations which hinder effective single-particle descriptions of the many-electron system. After 40 years since their discovery, it is widely accepted that the Hubbard model on the square lattice provides a minimal description of the low-energy electronic properties of cuprates. The model describes the competition between the electronic kinetic energy, modelled by nearest-neighbours hopping t, and the Coulomb repulsion, modelled by a purely local interaction potential U. At half-filling, this competition results in the so-called "Mott localisation" phenomenon, which distinguishes the metallic phase for U/t « 1 from an insulating phase for U/t » 1. The latter is characterised by the almost complete localisation of electrons due to the high energetic cost of hopping towards occupied sites. Interestingly, this basic competition is intimately related to AF ordering and, upon doping, to the formation of the SC state with characteristic d-wave symmetry. The fact that a purely repulsive interaction U is responsible for the formation of a SC state is remarkable, being superconductivity typically associated with an effective attractive interaction. In fact, a d-wave SC state can also be obtained, in general, by considering an attractive potential between electrons of neighbouring sites. Motivated by this observation, in this thesis, we study a modified version of the Hubbard model, dubbed as the "extended Hubbard model", in which we include a nearest-neighbours attractive potential -V. The general goal of this work is to explore the interplay between the purely local repulsion and the non-local attraction. This is not only motivated by the fact that both interactions are, in principle, responsible for d-wave superconductivity, but also by recent experimental observations which strongly suggest that the term -V needs to be included in order to accurately describe the magnetic spectra of some specific compounds. In this thesis, we study the extended Hubbard model using the Hartree-Fock method. Namely, we approximate the ground state by implementing a variational search in the subspace of the many-body Hilbert space of gaussian states. Despite its simplicity, the Hartree-Fock method provides a powerful framework to study competition among different phases, originating from different symmetry breaking mechanisms. In particular, we study the competition between three different phases: the normal phase, characterised by no symmetry breaking, the AF phase, characterised by a lowering of SU(2) symmetry, and the SC phase, characterised by the breaking of U(1) charge conservation. This thesis work led to a number of original results, which can be summarised by the general observation that the non-local attraction -V acts cooperatively with the local repulsion U for the stabilisation of the various phases hosted by the Hubbard model. For the normal phase, we find that the non-local attraction acts as a source of Mott localisation, leading to an effective reduction of the electronic bandwidth. In particular, for values of V larger than a critical value and close to half-filling, we find a strong Mott localisation characterised by the complete flattening of the electronic bands. Interestingly, this result shows an example of Mott localisation that can be described at the level of the Hartree-Fock approximation, whereas Mott localisation in the conventional Hubbard model usually requires more sophisticated approximation schemes. For the AF phase, we restrict our analysis to the half-filled case. We find that the pairing-induced Mott localisation leads to a significant enhancement of the magnetisation, primarily originating from the local repulsion U. Finally, we focus on the superconducting phase and derive self-consistency equations in both singlet and triplet Cooper pairing channels, showing how Cooper pairing can be mediated simultaneously by both the local repulsion and the non-local attraction. Therefore, we numerically investigate the singlet channel and find evidence of "symmetry mixing", namely, the formation of a superconducting gap that is neither symmetric nor anti-symmetric under rotations of π/2 in the plane. We show that symmetry mixing is connected to the emergence of a finite nematic order parameter, that signals the breaking of planar rotational symmetry. This nematic symmetry breaking results in the fact that the renormalisation of bands becomes anisotropic, producing a difference in electronic kinetics in the x and y directions. To summarise, the original results obtained in this thesis show that the non-local pairing provides a different route towards the formation of key strongly correlated phenomena, including Mott localisation and nematic superconductivity, and call for future investigation using more sophisticated methods such as, for example, the Dynamical Mean Field Theory.

•Jun 17, 2026•0 citations

Spin-nematic phases in models of correlated electron systems: A numerical study

Sylvain Capponi, Fakher F. Assaad

Strongly interacting systems are known to often spontaneously develop exotic ground states under certain conditions. For instance, spin nematic phases have been discovered in various magnetic models. Such phases, which break spin symmetry but have no net local magnetization, have also been proposed by Nersesyan et al. [J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 3, 3353 (1991)] in the context of electronic models. We introduce a $N$-flavor microscopic model that interpolates from the large-$N$ limit, where mean field is valid and such a nematic phase occurs, to the more realistic $N=1$ case. By using a sign-free quantum Monte Carlo, we show the existence of a spin nematic phase (analogous to a spin flux phase) for finite $N$; when $N$ decreases, quantum fluctuations increase and this phase ultimately disappears in favor of an $s$-wave superconducting state. We also show that this nematic phase extends up to a finite critical charge doping. Dynamical studies allow us to clarify the Fermi surface property: in the nematic phase at half-filling, it consists of four points and the low-energy structure has a Dirac conelike shape. Under doping, we observe clear signatures of Fermi pockets around these points. This is one of the few examples where numerical simulations show how quantum fluctuations can destroy a large-$N$ phase.

arXiv:cond-mat/0609140•Physical Review B•Jan 16, 2007•5 citations

Coexistence of nematic order and superconductivity in the Hubbard model

Jan Kaczmarczyk, Tobias Schickling, Jörg Bünemann

We study the interplay of nematic and superconducting order in the two-dimensional Hubbard model and show that they can coexist, especially when superconductivity is not the energetically dominant phase. Due to a breaking of the ${C}_{4}$ symmetry, the coexisting phase inherently contains admixture of the $s$-wave pairing components. As a result, the superconducting gap exhibits nonstandard features including changed nodal directions. Our results also show that in the optimally doped regime the pure superconducting phase is typically unstable towards developing nematicity (breaking of the ${C}_{4}$ symmetry). This has implications for the cuprate high-${T}_{c}$ superconductors, for which in this regime the so-called intertwined orders have recently been observed. Namely, the coexisting phase may be viewed as a precursor to such more involved patterns of symmetry breaking.

arXiv:1512.06688•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Aug 30, 2016•16 citations

Stripe order from the perspective of the Hubbard model

Edwin W. Huang, Christian B. Mendl, Hong‐Chen Jiang +2 more

Abstract A microscopic understanding of the strongly correlated physics of the cuprates must account for the translational and rotational symmetry breaking that is present across all cuprate families, commonly in the form of stripes. Here we investigate emergence of stripes in the Hubbard model, a minimal model believed to be relevant to the cuprate superconductors, using determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) simulations at finite temperatures and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) ground state calculations. By varying temperature, doping, and model parameters, we characterize the extent of stripes throughout the phase diagram of the Hubbard model. Our results show that including the often neglected next-nearest-neighbor hopping leads to the absence of spin incommensurability upon electron-doping and nearly half-filled stripes upon hole-doping. The similarities of these findings to experimental results on both electron and hole-doped cuprate families support a unified description across a large portion of the cuprate phase diagram.

arXiv:1709.02398•npj Quantum Materials•Apr 13, 2018•149 citations
Nematicity is a well-known property of liquid crystals and has been recently discussed in the context of strongly interacting electrons. An electronic nematic phase has been seen in many experiments in certain strongly correlated materials, in particular, in the pseudogap phase generic to many hole-doped cuprate superconductors. Recent measurements in high Tc superconductors have shown that even if the lattice is perfectly rotationally symmetric, the ground state can still have strongly nematic local properties. Our study of the two-dimensional one-band Hubbard model provides strong support for the recent experimental results on local rotational C4 symmetry breaking. The variational cluster approach is used here to show the possibility of an electronic nematic state and the proximity of the underlying symmetry-breaking ground state within the Hubbard model. We identify this nematic phase in the overdoped region and show that the local nematicity decreases with increasing electron filling. Our results also indicate that strong Coulomb interaction may drive the nematic phase into a phase similar to the stripe structure. The calculated spin (magnetic) correlation function in momentum space shows the effects resulting from real-space nematicity.
In order to understand various local phenomena related to electronic phase separation discovered recently in strongly correlated materials, quantum cluster methods are applied to a theoretical model, i.e., Hubbard model, which has successfully predicted basic properties of strongly correlated systems. Our calculations are performed at two levels: exact calculations based on the isolated small clusters via exact diagonalization and approximate calculations applied to large lattices using the variational cluster approximation (VCA).\nWe first study phase separation instabilities with the formation of a pairing gap in the two-dimensional Hubbard model for 8-site Betts clusters. The exact diagonalization method is applied to extract exact ground and excited states of the Hubbard model. The results show that the electronic states with one hole off half filling are unstable and they energetically prefer creating the spatial phase separation. The effect of next nearest hopping is also discussed in this part.\nWe studied the variation of the pairing when the out-of-plane correlation is present by adding an interacting apical site above the two-dimensional cluster plane. The calculations indicate that the out-of-plane correlation can be detrimental to the in-plane pairing effect. When it is not too strong to destroy electron pairs on the plane, the modulation of the apical site can drive the pairing gap to show a sinusoidal variation which is consistent with recent experimental discoveries.\nVariational cluster approximation is introduced to explore local properties of larger lattices. The local nematic state is studied in the square lattice using this method, which indicates that it is possible that the electronic states can locally break the C4 symmetry (90o$ rotational symmetry) to form a pattern where the electronic properties, such as charge and spin correlations, are different in x and y directions.\nThe spatial phase separation in the square and honeycomb lattices is also investigated by the variational cluster approximation. The study shows that Coulomb interaction and lattice geometry are both crucial for electronic phase separation. We propose that electronic phase separation is the result of an instability of the Fermi surface at the boundary of the first Brillouin zone of antiferromagnetic states.
The pseudogap regime of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors is characterized by a variety of competing orders, the nature of which are still widely debated. Recent experiments have provided evidence for electron nematic order, in which the electron fluid breaks rotational symmetry while preserving translational invariance. Raman spectroscopy, with its ability to symmetry resolve low energy excitations, is a unique tool that can be used to assess nematic fluctuations and nematic ordering tendencies. Here we compare results from determinant quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the Hubbard model to experimental results from Raman spectroscopy in ${\mathrm{La}}_{2\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Sr}}_{x}{\mathrm{CuO}}_{4}$, which show a prominent increase in the B1g{B}_{1g}B1g​ response around 10% hole doping as the temperature decreases, indicative of a rise in nematic fluctuations at low energy. Our results support a picture of nematic fluctuations with B1g{B}_{1g}B1g​ symmetry occurring in underdoped cuprates, which may arise from melted stripes at elevated temperatures.
High temperature superconductivity in copper oxides (cuprates) represents one of the most striking phenomena in condensed matter physics. These materials host superconducting states with the highest known critical temperatures, emerging upon doping antiferromagnetic insulator compounds. The antiferromagnetic (AF) insulating and superconducting (SC) phases defy standard descriptions in terms of band picture and conventional phonon-mediated superconductivity. In fact, these phenomena are genuine signatures of strong electronic correlations which hinder effective single-particle descriptions of the many-electron system. After 40 years since their discovery, it is widely accepted that the Hubbard model on the square lattice provides a minimal description of the low-energy electronic properties of cuprates. The model describes the competition between the electronic kinetic energy, modelled by nearest-neighbours hopping t, and the Coulomb repulsion, modelled by a purely local interaction potential U. At half-filling, this competition results in the so-called "Mott localisation" phenomenon, which distinguishes the metallic phase for U/t « 1 from an insulating phase for U/t » 1. The latter is characterised by the almost complete localisation of electrons due to the high energetic cost of hopping towards occupied sites. Interestingly, this basic competition is intimately related to AF ordering and, upon doping, to the formation of the SC state with characteristic d-wave symmetry. The fact that a purely repulsive interaction U is responsible for the formation of a SC state is remarkable, being superconductivity typically associated with an effective attractive interaction. In fact, a d-wave SC state can also be obtained, in general, by considering an attractive potential between electrons of neighbouring sites. Motivated by this observation, in this thesis, we study a modified version of the Hubbard model, dubbed as the "extended Hubbard model", in which we include a nearest-neighbours attractive potential -V. The general goal of this work is to explore the interplay between the purely local repulsion and the non-local attraction. This is not only motivated by the fact that both interactions are, in principle, responsible for d-wave superconductivity, but also by recent experimental observations which strongly suggest that the term -V needs to be included in order to accurately describe the magnetic spectra of some specific compounds. In this thesis, we study the extended Hubbard model using the Hartree-Fock method. Namely, we approximate the ground state by implementing a variational search in the subspace of the many-body Hilbert space of gaussian states. Despite its simplicity, the Hartree-Fock method provides a powerful framework to study competition among different phases, originating from different symmetry breaking mechanisms. In particular, we study the competition between three different phases: the normal phase, characterised by no symmetry breaking, the AF phase, characterised by a lowering of SU(2) symmetry, and the SC phase, characterised by the breaking of U(1) charge conservation. This thesis work led to a number of original results, which can be summarised by the general observation that the non-local attraction -V acts cooperatively with the local repulsion U for the stabilisation of the various phases hosted by the Hubbard model. For the normal phase, we find that the non-local attraction acts as a source of Mott localisation, leading to an effective reduction of the electronic bandwidth. In particular, for values of V larger than a critical value and close to half-filling, we find a strong Mott localisation characterised by the complete flattening of the electronic bands. Interestingly, this result shows an example of Mott localisation that can be described at the level of the Hartree-Fock approximation, whereas Mott localisation in the conventional Hubbard model usually requires more sophisticated approximation schemes. For the AF phase, we restrict our analysis to the half-filled case. We find that the pairing-induced Mott localisation leads to a significant enhancement of the magnetisation, primarily originating from the local repulsion U. Finally, we focus on the superconducting phase and derive self-consistency equations in both singlet and triplet Cooper pairing channels, showing how Cooper pairing can be mediated simultaneously by both the local repulsion and the non-local attraction. Therefore, we numerically investigate the singlet channel and find evidence of "symmetry mixing", namely, the formation of a superconducting gap that is neither symmetric nor anti-symmetric under rotations of π/2 in the plane. We show that symmetry mixing is connected to the emergence of a finite nematic order parameter, that signals the breaking of planar rotational symmetry. This nematic symmetry breaking results in the fact that the renormalisation of bands becomes anisotropic, producing a difference in electronic kinetics in the x and y directions. To summarise, the original results obtained in this thesis show that the non-local pairing provides a different route towards the formation of key strongly correlated phenomena, including Mott localisation and nematic superconductivity, and call for future investigation using more sophisticated methods such as, for example, the Dynamical Mean Field Theory.
Strongly interacting systems are known to often spontaneously develop exotic ground states under certain conditions. For instance, spin nematic phases have been discovered in various magnetic models. Such phases, which break spin symmetry but have no net local magnetization, have also been proposed by Nersesyan et al. [J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 3, 3353 (1991)] in the context of electronic models. We introduce a NNN-flavor microscopic model that interpolates from the large-NNN limit, where mean field is valid and such a nematic phase occurs, to the more realistic N=1N=1N=1 case. By using a sign-free quantum Monte Carlo, we show the existence of a spin nematic phase (analogous to a spin flux phase) for finite NNN; when NNN decreases, quantum fluctuations increase and this phase ultimately disappears in favor of an sss-wave superconducting state. We also show that this nematic phase extends up to a finite critical charge doping. Dynamical studies allow us to clarify the Fermi surface property: in the nematic phase at half-filling, it consists of four points and the low-energy structure has a Dirac conelike shape. Under doping, we observe clear signatures of Fermi pockets around these points. This is one of the few examples where numerical simulations show how quantum fluctuations can destroy a large-NNN phase.
We study the interplay of nematic and superconducting order in the two-dimensional Hubbard model and show that they can coexist, especially when superconductivity is not the energetically dominant phase. Due to a breaking of the C4{C}_{4}C4​ symmetry, the coexisting phase inherently contains admixture of the sss-wave pairing components. As a result, the superconducting gap exhibits nonstandard features including changed nodal directions. Our results also show that in the optimally doped regime the pure superconducting phase is typically unstable towards developing nematicity (breaking of the C4{C}_{4}C4​ symmetry). This has implications for the cuprate high-Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ superconductors, for which in this regime the so-called intertwined orders have recently been observed. Namely, the coexisting phase may be viewed as a precursor to such more involved patterns of symmetry breaking.
Abstract A microscopic understanding of the strongly correlated physics of the cuprates must account for the translational and rotational symmetry breaking that is present across all cuprate families, commonly in the form of stripes. Here we investigate emergence of stripes in the Hubbard model, a minimal model believed to be relevant to the cuprate superconductors, using determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) simulations at finite temperatures and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) ground state calculations. By varying temperature, doping, and model parameters, we characterize the extent of stripes throughout the phase diagram of the Hubbard model. Our results show that including the often neglected next-nearest-neighbor hopping leads to the absence of spin incommensurability upon electron-doping and nearly half-filled stripes upon hole-doping. The similarities of these findings to experimental results on both electron and hole-doped cuprate families support a unified description across a large portion of the cuprate phase diagram.