In strongly correlated electron systems the constraint which prohibits the double electron occupation at local sites can be realized by either the infinite Coulomb interaction or the correlated hopping interaction described by the Hubbard operators, but they both render the conventional field theory inapplicable. Relaxing such the constraint leads to a class of correlated hopping models based on the deformed Hubbard operators which smoothly interpolate the locally free and strong coupling limits by a tunable interaction parameter $0\leq λ\leq 1$. Here we propose a coherent state path integral approach appropriate to the deformed Hubbard operators for {\it arbitrary} $λ$. It is shown that this model system exhibits the correlated Fermi liquid behavior characterized by the enhanced Wilson ratio for all $λ$. It is further found that in the presence of on-site Coulomb interaction a finite Mott gap appears between the upper and lower Hubbard bands, with the upper band spectral weight being heavily reduced by $λ$. Our approach stands in general spatial dimensions and reveals an unexpected interplay between the correlated hopping and the Coulomb repulsion.
In strongly correlated electron systems the constraint which prohibits the double electron occupation at local sites can be realized by either the infinite Coulomb interaction or the correlated hopping interaction described by the Hubbard operators, but they both render the conventional field theory inapplicable. Relaxing such the constraint leads to a class of correlated hopping models based on the deformed Hubbard operators which smoothly interpolate the locally free and strong coupling limits by a tunable interaction parameter 0≤λ≤1. Here we propose a coherent state path integral approach appropriate to the deformed Hubbard operators for {\it arbitrary} λ. It is shown that this model system exhibits the correlated Fermi liquid behavior characterized by the enhanced Wilson ratio for all λ. It is further found that in the presence of on-site Coulomb interaction a finite Mott gap appears between the upper and lower Hubbard bands, with the upper band spectral weight being heavily reduced by λ. Our approach stands in general spatial dimensions and reveals an unexpected interplay between the correlated hopping and the Coulomb repulsion.
A state-of-the-art review is given of the investigations of the Hubbard model, which is the main model used in the theory of strongly correlated electron systems. It is shown how the main correlation effects — the metal–insulator phase transition, the appearance of localised magnetic moments, and the breakdown of the Fermi-liquid behaviour — appear in the case of strong electron correlations when U ~ W, where U is the Coulomb repulsion parameter and W is the band width. Different approaches to the problem, not based on perturbation theory in terms of the parameter U/W or W/U, are presented. A new method in the theory of strongly correlated systems, in which the limit of infinite number of dimensions of space, d = ∞, is the main feature of the review. The physical results obtained by this approach are compared with those deduced by traditional methods. An overview of the behaviour of strongly correlated systems is given for wide ranges of the model parameters U and W, and of the electron density n.
The Fermi liquid theory is a central concept in modern condensed matter physics used to describe conventional metals. A state of this universality class consists of well-defined quasiparticles, which occupy a finite number of states within a Fermi volume defined in momentum space. According to the Luttinger’s theorem, such a state encloses a Fermi volume proportional to the electron density modulo the filled bands if no symmetry is broken. In the past decades strong deviations from Fermi liquid theory have been observed in the scaling behavior of thermodynamic observables in different materials, among which are for instance cuprates and iron pnictides. This thesis is about two prototypical systems that can not be described by Fermi liquid theory. The first part of this work investigates two-dimensional effective models, which are in a Mott insulating state at half-filling and have a finite conductivity when doped with holes. In such a Mott insulating state, the charge carriers are strongly localized due to the Coulomb repulsion. Hence, strong correlations are assumed to have a strong impact on the formation of the ground state, also in the regime of small hole concentration. In a first project we have used a so-called spinon dopon mean-field theory to represent the two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model with strong on-site repulsive interaction in effective degrees of freedom, in which the holes can be embedded into a quantum spin liquid. The corresponding SU(2) invariant ground state belongs to the class of fractionalized Fermi liquids. In a second project we investigate a quantum dimer model, an effective model based on a Hilbert space spanned by short range singlets and bound states of holes and spins. The focus here is on the calculation of the hole-part of the electron spectral function by using exact diagonalization and its comparison with two analytic methods, a diagrammatic computation based on the Bethe-Salpeter equation and a so-called two-mode approximation. The electron spectral function shows a similar analytic form in momentum space between nodal and antinodal point when compared to results from photoemission spectroscopy experiments on cuprates. Furthermore, in a subsequent work we calculate the exact ground state of the quantum dimer model along a certain parameter line. In order to analyze the behavior of the elctron spectral function when increasing the density of holes, we investigate the Fermi-Hubbard model in a current project using a dynamical mean-field approach. To solve the 4-site cluster impurity problem, we use a numerical renormalization group approach. However, numerical limitations force us to restrict the analysis to spin-polarized baths. According to the spectral data, the system is similar to the SU(2) invariant case at half-filling in a Mott insulating state and posseses a momentum-selective energy gap at finite doping. The topology of the Fermi surface shows a Lifshitz transition when increasing the hole concentration. Here, the curvature of the Fermi surface changes from electron- to hole-like. For comparison we apply the dynamical mean-field theory also to the quantum dimer model and observe that the electron spectral functions at finite doping are qualitatively similar to that of the two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model. The second half of the work is about Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory, which is used to describe the low-energy effective degrees of freedom of one-dimensional systems. Here, we first discuss a conceptional extension of the operator-based bosonization theory for one-dimensional systems. This extension is especially suited for inhomogeneous one-dimensional systems. First, we investigate a one-dimensional system with a local interation potential and compute an exact solution of the single particle propagator at T = 0. The critical exponent of the single particle propagator has an unconventional form as a function of the microscopic Tomonaga-Luttinger parameters, which is not covered by the original Luttinger paradigm postulated by F. Duncan M. Haldane. In a second project on one-dimensional systems, we study the impact of scattering processes among bosonic low-energy excitations on the thermalization process. Such scattering processes are irrelevant on large length scales, however strongly affect the dynamics. In our analytic analysis we focus on a experimental setup, where a one-dimensional Bose gas is instantaneously splitted in two identical, however strongly correlated, halves of one-dimensional electronic systems. In the following, the corresponding non-equilibrium state runs through multiple regimes in time, such as a metastable prethermalization regime. However, above a certain threshold in time such scattering processes cause an effective thermalization of the system. In order to demonstrate this, we compute the kinetic equation in the Keldysh field integral formalism from a diagrammatic expansion based on a self-consistent Born approximation.
The Hubbard model in the strong-coupling regime is mainly studied by Kondo-lattice theory or 1/d expansion theory, with d the spatial dimensionality. In two dimensions and higher, the ground state within the Hilbert subspace with no order parameter is a normal Fermi liquid except for n=1 and U/W=+infinity, with n the electron density per unit cell, U the on-site repulsion, and W the bandwidth; the cooperation between the Kondo effect, which favors a local singlet on each unit cell, and a resonating-valence-bond effect, which favors a local singlet on each pair of nearest-neighbor unit cells, stabilizes the Fermi liquid, whose ground state is a singlet as a whole, in the strong-coupling regime. In the whole Hilbert space with no restriction, the normal Fermi liquid is unstable at least against a magnetic or superconducting state. This analysis confirms an early Fermi-liquid theory of high-temperature superconductivity, F. J. Ohkawa, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 26, L652 (1987). The ground state for n=1 and U/W=+infinity is a Mott insulator. Actual metal-insulator transitions cannot be explained within the Hubbard model. In order to explain them, the electron-phonon interaction, multi-band or multi-orbital effects, and effects of disorder should be considered beyond the Hubbard model. The crossover between local-moment magnetism and itinerant-electron magnetism corresponds to that between a localized spin and a normal Fermi liquid in the Kondo effect and it is simply a Mott metal-insulator crossover.
Slave boson mean-field studies of the ground state of the Hubbard model with correlated hopping were performed. The approach qualitatively recovers the exact results for the case when the hopping integral t equals the correlated hopping integral X. The phase diagram for the strongly correlated state with only singly occupied sites, the weakly correlated state, where single and double occupation is allowed, and for the superconducting state, was determined for any value of X and any electron concentration n. At the half-filled band (n=1) a direct transition from the superconductor to the Mott insulator was found. In the region of strong correlations the superconducting solution is stable for n close to 1, in contrast to the case of weak correlations, in which superconductivity occurs at $n\ensuremath{\approx}0$ and $n\ensuremath{\approx}2.$ We have also found that strong correlations change the characteristics of the superconducting phase, e.g., the gap in the excitation spectrum exhibits a nonexponential dependence on the on-site Coulomb integral U close to the phase-transition point.
We reconsider the strong-coupling expansion for the Hubbard model recently introduced by Sarker and Pairault et al. By introducing slave particles that act as projection operators onto the empty, singly occupied and doubly occupied atomic states, the perturbation theory around the atomic limit distinguishes between processes that do conserve or do not conserve the total number of doubly occupied sites. This allows for a systematic t/U expansion that does not break down at low temperature (t being the intersite hopping amplitude and U the local Coulomb repulsion). The fermionic field becomes a two-component field, which reflects the presence of the two Hubbard bands. The single-particle propagator is naturally expressed as a function of a 2×2 matrix self-energy. Furthermore, by introducing a time- and space-fluctuating spin-quantization axis in the functional integral, we can expand around a "non-degenerate" ground-state where each singly occupied site has a well defined spin direction (which may fluctuate in time). This formalism is used to derive the effective action of charge carriers in the lower Hubbard band to first order in t/U. We recover the action of the t–J model in the spin-hole coherent-state path integral. We also compare our results with those previously obtained by studying fluctuations around the large-U Hartree–Fock saddle point.
We discuss the physical properties of strongly correlated electron states for a linear chain obtained with the help of a recently proposed method combining an exact diagonalization in Fock space with an ab initio readjustment of single-particle orbitals in the correlated state. The method extends the current discussion of correlated states, since the properties are obtained with varying lattice spacings. The finite system of N atoms evolves with the increasing interatomic distance from a Fermi-liquid-like state into the Mott insulator. The criteria of the localization are discussed in detail, since the results are already convergent for N>8. During this process the Fermi-Dirac distribution is smeared out, the effective band mass increases by \ensuremath{\sim}50%, and the spin-spin correlation functions reduce to those for a Heisenberg antiferromagnet. Values of microscopic parameters such as the hopping and the kinetic-exchange integrals, as well as the magnitude of both intraatomic and interatomic Coulomb and exchange interactions are calculated. We also determine the values of various local electron-lattice couplings, and show that they are comparable to the kinetic exchange contribution in the strong-correlation limit. The magnitudes of the dimerization and the zero-point motion are also discussed. Our results provide a canonical example of a tractable strongly correlated system with a precise, first-principles description as a function of interatomic distance of a model system involving all hopping integrals, all pair-site interactions, and exact one-band Wannier functions.