The 2D Hubbard model with nearest-neighbor hopping on the square lattice and an average of one electron per site is known to undergo an extended crossover from metallic to insulating behavior driven by proliferating antiferromagnetic correlations. We study signatures of this crossover in spin and charge correlation functions and present results obtained with controlled accuracy using the diagrammatic Monte Carlo approach in the range of parameters amenable to experimental verification with ultracold atoms in optical lattices. The qualitative changes in charge and spin correlations associated with the crossover are observed at well-separated temperature scales, which encase the intermediary regime of non-Fermi-liquid character, where local magnetic moments are formed and nonlocal fluctuations in both channels are essential.
The interaction-driven evolution from a Fermi liquid to a Mott insulator is a hallmark of strongly correlated fermion systems. In this work, we present a {\it numerically unbiased} study of such metal-to-insulator crossover in the half-filled square-lattice Hubbard model at finite temperatures, employing auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo method. By jointly analyzing thermodynamic and dynamical observables, we establish the crossover diagram of the model in the temperature-interaction (
T-
U) plane. With increasing
U, our numerical results reveal an extended crossover regime, which we refer to as the {\it Bad Metal}, that separates the Fermi liquid and Mott insulator. During the crossover, we also examine the antiferromagnetic spin correlations and observe pronounced nodal-antinodal dichotomy in the momentum-resolved single-particle spectral functions. Furthermore, we investigate the temperature dependence of several commonly used observables in the model. As representative results, we achieve an accurate map of the thermal entropy across the crossover diagram, and identify the parameter regions in which the model exhibits the Pomeranchuk cooling, characterized by an adiabatic cooling with increasing
U. Beyond offering a more refined understanding of the crossover phenomenon, our work also provides valuable benchmark and guideline for future optical lattice experiments on the square-lattice Hubbard model.
We have systematically studied the thermodynamic properties of a two-dimensional half-filled
SU(2N) Hubbard model on a square lattice by using the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method. The entropy-temperature relation, the isoentropy curve, and the probability distribution of the on-site occupation number are calculated in both SU(4) and SU(6) cases, which exhibit prominent features of the Pomeranchuk effect. We analyze these thermodynamic behaviors based on energy scales in the density and spin channels. In the density channel, the interaction strength that marks the crossover from the weak to strong interaction regimes increases with the number of fermion components. In the spin channel, increasing the number of fermion components enhances quantum spin fluctuations, which is shown in the simulations of uniform spin susceptibilities and antiferromagnetic structure factors.
The ground state of the Hubbard model with nearest-neighbor hopping on the square lattice at half filling is known to be that of an antiferromagnetic (AFM) band insulator for any on-site repulsion. At finite temperature, the absence of long-range order makes the question of how the interaction-driven insulator is realized nontrivial. We address this problem with controlled accuracy in the thermodynamic limit using self-energy diagrammatic determinant Monte Carlo and dynamical cluster approximation methods and show that development of long-range AFM correlations drives an extended crossover from Fermi liquid to insulating behavior in the parameter regime that precludes a metal-to-insulator transition. The intermediate crossover state is best described as a non-Fermi liquid with a partially gapped Fermi surface.
Recent advances in fluorescence imaging have enabled direct measurements of doublon, singlon, and holon correlation functions in cold-atom experiments. We demonstrate that these correlators provide a powerful probe of the extended crossover from metallic to insulating behavior at intermediate and high temperatures. To this end, we carry out determinantal quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the two-dimensional repulsive Fermi-Hubbard model on a square lattice, varying doping, interaction strength
U, and temperature
T. Our results reveal clear signatures of a crossover from the metallic regime at small
U to the Mott insulating regime at large
U. Specifically, we note the following: (1) At half-filling, we distinguish three regimes (metallic, non-Fermi-liquid, and Mott insulating) by analyzing the temperature dependence of the thermodynamic density of states $\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\kappa}}=\frac{\ensuremath{\partial}n}{\ensuremath{\partial}\ensuremath{\mu}}$ in comparison with the low-energy single-particle density of states $N(\ensuremath{\omega})$. (2) At finite doping, although $N(\ensuremath{\omega})$ remains gapless, a sign change in $\frac{\ensuremath{\partial}\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\kappa}}}{\ensuremath{\partial}T}$ marks a transition from insulating to metallic behavior at a critical density
ncr(U,T). (3) These crossovers can also be tracked using experimentally accessible correlators, such as density-density, moment-moment, and doublon-holon correlations, providing valuable diagnostics in settings where direct spectral information is difficult to obtain.
We study the finite-temperature Fermi-liquid to non-Fermi-liquid crossover in the two-dimensional Hubbard model for a range of dopings using the self-consistent ladder dual fermion method. We consider relatively high temperatures where by comparing the single-particle self-energy and the two-particle spin susceptibility we identify a suppression of the density of states near the Fermi level caused by a quasi-antiferromagnetic behavior that is itself characterized by a long, but finite, correlation length scale which we extract. We compute the single-particle self-energy, and the charge/spin susceptibilities for the entire doping range at relatively high temperature, and also for the half-filled weak-coupling case at relatively low temperatures. We perform fluctuation diagnostics to decompose the single-particle self-energy into scattering
q-vector and bosonic frequency contributions in the spin channel. Within this framework we find that the key contributions to the single-particle self-energy that give non-Fermi-liquid character show complicated dependence on zero, positive, and negative frequency bosonic modes. We find that for a nominal choice of ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ that electron- and hole-doped systems with similar Fermi-liquid character have distinct spin and charge susceptibility and distinct spin-fluctuation diagnostics spectra.