A new mean field theory is proposed for the Mott transition in the Hubbard model based on the slave rotor representation of the electron operator. This theory provides a better description of the role of the long range charge correlation in the Mott insulating state and offers a good estimation of the critical correlation strength for the Mott transition. We have constructed a new variational wave function for the Mott insulating state based on this new slave rotor mean field theory. We find this new variational wave function outperforms the conventional Jastrow type wave function with long range charge correlator in the Mott insulating state. It predicts a continuous Mott transition with non-divergent quasiparticle mass at the transition point. We also show that the commonly used on-site mean field decoupling for the slave rotor corresponds to the Gutzwiller approximation for the Gutzwiller projected wave function with only on-site charge correlator, which can not describe the Mott transition in any finite dimensional system.
A new mean field theory is proposed for the Mott transition in the Hubbard model based on the slave rotor representation of the electron operator. This theory provides a better description of the role of the long range charge correlation in the Mott insulating state and offers a good estimation of the critical correlation strength for the Mott transition. We have constructed a new variational wave function for the Mott insulating state based on this new slave rotor mean field theory. We find this new variational wave function outperforms the conventional Jastrow type wave function with long range charge correlator in the Mott insulating state. It predicts a continuous Mott transition with non-divergent quasiparticle mass at the transition point. We also show that the commonly used on-site mean field decoupling for the slave rotor corresponds to the Gutzwiller approximation for the Gutzwiller projected wave function with only on-site charge correlator, which can not describe the Mott transition in any finite dimensional system.
The Mott metal-insulator transition in the Hubbard model is studied by constructing a dynamical slave-boson mean-field theory in the limit of large lattice coordination number z that incorporates the binding between doubly occupied (doublon) and empty (holon) sites. On the Mott insulating side where all doublons and holons bond in real space into excitonic pairs leading to the charge gap, the theory simplifies considerably to leading order in 1/z and becomes exact on the infinite-z Bethe lattice. An asymptotic solution is obtained for a continuous Mott transition associated with the closing of the charge gap at a critical value of the Hubbard Uc and the corresponding doublon density ndc, hopping ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{d}^{c}$ and doublon-holon pairing ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}_{d}^{c}$ amplitudes. We find ${U}_{c}={U}_{\mathrm{BR}}[1\ensuremath{-}2{n}_{d}^{c}\ensuremath{-}\sqrt{z}({\ensuremath{\chi}}_{d}^{c}+{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}_{d}^{c})]\ensuremath{\simeq}0.8{U}_{\mathrm{BR}}$, where UBR is the critical value for the Brinkman-Rice transition in the Gutzwiller approximation captured in the static mean-field solution of the slave-boson formulation of Kotliar and Ruckenstein. Thus, the Mott transition can be viewed as the quantum correction to the Brinkman-Rice transition due to doublon-holon binding. Quantitative comparisons are made to the results of the dynamical mean-field theory, showing good agreement. In the absence of magnetic order, the Mott insulator is a U(1) quantum spin liquid with nonzero intersite spinon hopping that survives the large-z limit and lifts the 2N-fold degeneracy of the local moments. We show that the spinons are coupled to the doublons/holons by a dissipative compact U(1) gauge field in the deconfined phase, realizing the spin-charge separated gapless spin liquid Mott insulator.
The multiorbital Hubbard model is expressed in terms of quantum phase variables (``slave rotors'') conjugate to the local charge, and of auxiliary fermions, providing an economical representation of the Hilbert space of strongly correlated systems. When the phase variables are treated in a local mean-field manner, similar results to the dynamical mean-field theory are obtained, namely a Brinkman-Rice transition at commensurate fillings together with a ``preformed'' Mott gap in the single-particle density of states. The slave-rotor formalism allows to go beyond the local description and take into account spatial correlations, following an analogy to the superfluid-insulator transition of bosonic systems. We find that the divergence of the effective mass at the metal-insulator transition is suppressed by short range magnetic correlations in finite-dimensional systems. Furthermore, the strict separation of energy scales between the Fermi-liquid coherence scale and the Mott gap, found in the local picture, holds only approximately in finite dimensions, due to the existence of low-energy collective modes related to zero-sound.
The Mott-Hubbard transition is a paradigmatic phenomenon driven by strong electronic correlations. We investigate this transition in a three-orbital modified periodic Anderson model using slave-rotor mean-field theory. A minimal two-site cluster extension is introduced to understand the minimal effects of short-range spatial correlations. In comparison to the single-site solution, short-range spatial correlations reveal a shift of the transition point. Going beyond the slave-rotor analysis, we also evaluate the dynamical self-energy and map it onto the boundary Green's function of a non-interacting semi-infinite auxiliary chain. For the metallic phase, the resulting hopping pattern corresponds to a topologically trivial generalized Su--Schrieffer--Heeger chain. This construction provides a framework for exploring the possible topological character of the Mott transition in this model.
In this paper, we develop a new type of slave particle method which is similar to the slave rotor model except that the quantum rotor is substituted by a spin one slave particle. The spin-one slave particle itself can be represented in terms of Schwinger bosons/fermions. This approach is more conveniently applicable to the strongly correlated Hamiltonians with on-site Hubbard interaction and resolves the limitations of using the slave rotor model as well as the Anderson-Zou slave particle technique. For instance, the mean-field parameters of the slave spin method do not vanish above the Mott transition and this approach is smoothly connected to the non-interacting limit. As an example, we study the phase diagram of the Kane-Mele-Hubbard model using our current approach. In the absence of the spin-orbit interaction, the Mott transition occurs at Uc3t1. Several aspects of the slave spin method, its gauge theory and various possible mean-field states associated with this approach have been discussed.
We review the recently proposed extension of the Gutzwiller approximation, M. Schiro' and M. Fabrizio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 076401 (2010), designed to describe the out-of-equilibrium time-evolution of a Gutzwiller-type variational wave function for correlated electrons. The method, which is strictly variational in the limit of infinite lattice-coordination, is quite general and flexible, and it is applicable to generic non-equilibrium conditions, even far beyond the linear response regime. As an application, we discuss the quench dynamics of a single-band Hubbard model at half-filling, where the method predicts a dynamical phase transition above a critical quench that resembles the sharp crossover observed by time-dependent dynamical mean field theory. We next show that one can actually define in some cases a multi-configurational wave function combination of a whole set of mutually orthogonal Gutzwiller wave functions. The Hamiltonian projected in that subspace can be exactly evaluated and is equivalent to a model of auxiliary spins coupled to non-interacting electrons, closely related to the slave-spin theories for correlated electron models. The Gutzwiller approximation turns out to be nothing but the mean-field approximation applied to that spin-fermion model, which displays, for any number of bands and integer fillings, a spontaneous Z2 symmetry breaking that can be identified as the Mott insulator-to-metal transition.
A slave-spin representation of fermion operators has recently been proposed for the half-filled single and multiband Hubbard model. We show that with the addition of a gauge variable, the formalism can be extended to finite doping. We solve the resulting spin problem using the cluster mean-field approximation. This approximation takes short-range correlations into account by exact diagonalization on the cluster, whereas long-range correlations beyond the size of clusters are treated at the mean-field level. In the limit where the cluster has only one site and the interaction strength U is infinite, this approach reduces to the Gutzwiller approximation. There are some qualitative differences when the size of the cluster is finite. We first compute the critical U for the Mott transition as a function of a frustrating nearest-neighbor interaction on lattices relevant for various correlated systems, namely, the cobaltates, the layered organic superconductors and the high-temperature superconductors. For the triangular lattice, we also study the extended Hubbard model with nearest-neighbor repulsion. In addition to a uniform metallic state, we find a $\sqrt{(3)}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\sqrt{(3)}$ charge density wave in a broad doping regime, including commensurate ones. We find that in the large U limit, intersite Coulomb repulsion V strongly suppresses the single-particle weight of the metallic state.