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arXiv:2107.11344 · npj Quantum Materials

Degenerate plaquette physics as key ingredient of high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates

Michael Danilov, Erik G. C. P. van Loon, Sergey Brener, Sergei Iskakov, Mikhail I. Katsnelson, Alexander I. Lichtenstein

Published Apr 28, 2022• 24 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract We study the physics of high-temperature cuprate superconductors starting from the highly degenerate four-site plaquette of the $$t-t^{\prime} -U$$ t − t ′ − U Hubbard model as a reference system. The degeneracy causes strong fluctuations when a lattice of plaquettes is constructed. We show that there is a large binding energy between holes when a set of four plaquettes is considered. The next-nearest-neighbour hopping $$t^{\prime}$$ t ′ plays a crucial role in the formation of these strongly bound electronic bipolarons whose coherence at lower temperature could be the explanation for superconductivity. A complementary approach is cluster dual fermion starting from a single degenerate plaquette, which contains the relevant short-ranged fluctuations from the beginning. It gives d-wave superconductivity as the leading instability under a reasonably broad range of parameters. The origin of the pseudogap is also discussed in terms of the coupling of degenerate plaquettes. Thus, some of the essential elements of cuprate superconductivity appear from the local plaquette physics.

DOI
10.1038/s41535-022-00454-6

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Abstract We study the physics of high-temperature cuprate superconductors starting from the highly degenerate four-site plaquette of the t−t′−Ut-t^{\prime} -Ut−t′−U t − t ′ − U Hubbard model as a reference system. The degeneracy causes strong fluctuations when a lattice of plaquettes is constructed. We show that there is a large binding energy between holes when a set of four plaquettes is considered. The next-nearest-neighbour hopping t′t^{\prime}t′ t ′ plays a crucial role in the formation of these strongly bound electronic bipolarons whose coherence at lower temperature could be the explanation for superconductivity. A complementary approach is cluster dual fermion starting from a single degenerate plaquette, which contains the relevant short-ranged fluctuations from the beginning. It gives d-wave superconductivity as the leading instability under a reasonably broad range of parameters. The origin of the pseudogap is also discussed in terms of the coupling of degenerate plaquettes. Thus, some of the essential elements of cuprate superconductivity appear from the local plaquette physics.
We present a strong-coupling approach to the theory of high-temperature superconductivity based on the observation of a quantum critical point in the plaquette within the $t,{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ Hubbard model. The crossing of ground-state energies in the N=2−−4N=2--4N=2−−4 sectors occurs for parameters close to the optimal doping. The theory predicts the maximum of the ${d}_{{x}^{2}\ensuremath{-}{y}^{2}}$-wave order parameter at the border between localized and itinerant electron behaviors and gives a natural explanation for the pseudogap formation via the soft-fermion mode related to local singlet states of the plaquette in the environment. Our approach follows the general line of resonating valence-bond theory stressing a crucial role of singlets in the physics of high-Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ superconductors but focuses on the formation of local singlets, similar to phenomena observed in frustrated one-dimensional quantum spin models.
Abstract The spectral properties of the doped t – t ’ Hubbard model, using parameters typical for high-temperature cuprate superconductors, and the mechanism of d-wave pairing remain among the longstanding problems of many-body fermionic materials. We used a strong-coupling Green’s function expansion around a correlated reference system, namely a particle-hole-symmetric undoped Hubbard lattice with t′=0{t}^{{\prime} }=0t′=0 t ′ = 0 , which can be treated numerically exactly using sign-problem-free lattice Quantum Monte Carlo calculations. This reference system exhibits a large antiferromagnetic Mott-Hubbard-Slater gap in the electronic spectrum. We investigate how the Mott-like spectrum is reconstructed under finite doping and nonzero t′{t}^{{\prime} }t′ t ′ using a dual-fermion-inspired perturbation expansion. For a large next-nearest-neighbor hopping t′=−0.3t{t}^{{\prime} }=-0.3tt′=−0.3t t ′ = − 0.3 t , characteristic of cuprate families with T c around 100 K, the electronic spectral function reveals a strongly renormalized flat-band feature with a pseudogap near the antinodal point. The superconducting response of this system to a small dx2−y2{d}_{{x}^{2}-{y}^{2}}dx2−y2​ d x 2 − y 2 -like external field shows a pseudogap at the antinodal point in the normal part of the Nambu Green’s function, associated with “bad-fermion” behavior in the normal phase. At the same time, the anomalous Green’s function exhibits a d-wave-like structure with zero response at the nodal point of the Brillouin zone.
We calculate the properties of the two-band Hubbard model using the dynamical cluster approximation. The phase diagram resembles the generic phase diagram of the cuprates, showing a strong asymmetry with respect to electron- and hole-doped regimes, in agreement with experiment. Asymmetric features are also seen in one-particle spectral functions and in the charge, spin, and ddd-wave pairing-susceptibility functions. We address the possible reduction of the two-band model to a low-energy single-band one, as it was suggested by Zhang and Rice. Comparing the two-band Hubbard model properties with the single-band Hubbard model ones, we have found similar low-energy physics provided that the next-nearest-neighbor hopping term ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ has a significant value $({t}^{\ensuremath{'}}∕t\ensuremath{\approx}0.3)$. The parameter ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ is the main culprit for the electron-hole asymmetry. However, a significant value of ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ cannot be provided in a strict Zhang and Rice [Phys. Rev. B 37, R3759 (1988); 41, 7243 (1990)] picture where the extra holes added into the system bind to the existing Cu holes forming local singlets. We note that by considering approximate singlet states, such as plaquette states, reasonable values of ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$, which capture qualitatively the physics of the two-band model, can be obtained. We conclude that a single-band $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}U$ Hubbard model captures the basic physics of the cuprates concerning superconductivity, antiferromagnetism, pseudogap, and electron-hole asymmetry, but is not suitable for a quantitative analysis or to describe physical properties involving energy scales larger than about 0.5 eV.
Extensive numerical studies have demonstrated that the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model contains much of the key physics in cuprate high-temperature superconductors. However, there is no definitive proof that the Hubbard model truly possesses a superconducting ground state or, if it does, of how it depends on model parameters. To answer these longstanding questions, we study an extension of the Hubbard model including an infinite-range ddd-wave pair field term, which precipitates a superconducting state in the ddd-wave channel. Using exact diagonalization on 16-site square clusters, we study the evolution of the ground state as a function of the strength of the pairing term. This is achieved by monitoring the fidelity metric of the ground state, as well as determining the ratio between the two largest eigenvalues of the ddd-wave pair/spin/charge-density matrices. The calculations show a ddd-wave superconducting ground state in doped clusters bracketed by a strong antiferromagnetic state at half filling controlled by the Coulomb repulsion UUU and a weak short-range checkerboard charge ordered state at larger hole doping controlled by the next-nearest-neighbor hopping ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$. We also demonstrate that negative ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ plays an important role in facilitating ddd-wave superconductivity.
We present an infinite-dimensional lattice of two-by-two plaquettes, the quadruple Bethe lattice, with Hubbard interaction and solve it exactly by means of the cluster dynamical mean-field theory. It exhibits a ddd-wave superconducting phase that is related to a highly degenerate point in the phase diagram of the isolated plaquette at that the ground states of the particle number sectors N=2,3,and4N=2,\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}3,\phantom{\rule{4.pt}{0ex}}\text{and}\phantom{\rule{4.pt}{0ex}}4N=2,3,and4 cross. The superconducting gap is formed by the renormalized lower Slater peak of the correlated, hole-doped Mott insulator. We engineer parts of the interaction and find that pair hoppings between X/YX/YX/Y momenta are the main two-particle correlations of the superconducting phase. The suppression of the superconductivity is caused by the diminishing of pair hopping correlations in the overdoped regime and by the charge blocking in the underdoped one. The optimal doping is $\ensuremath{\sim}0.15$ at which the underlying normal state shows a Lifshitz transition. Tuning intra- and interplaquette hoppings allows to disentangle superconductivity from antiferromagnetism as the latter requires larger interplaquette hoppings. We expect our results to provide additional insight into the nature of the superconductivity in cuprates.
This is a short review of the theoretical work on the two-dimensional Hubbard model performed in Sherbrooke in the last few years. It is written on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity. We discuss several approaches, how they were benchmarked and how they agree sufficiently with each other that we can trust that the results are accurate solutions of the Hubbard model. Then comparisons are made with experiment. We show that the Hubbard model does exhibit d-wave superconductivity and antiferromagnetism essentially where they are observed for both hole- and electron-doped cuprates. We also show that the pseudogap phenomenon comes out of these calculations. In the case of electron-doped high temperature superconductors, comparisons with angle-resolved photoemission experiments are nearly quantitative. The value of the pseudogap temperature observed for these compounds in recent photoemission experiments had been predicted by theory before it was observed experimentally. Additional experimental confirmation would be useful. The theoretical methods that are surveyed include mostly the two-particle self-consistent approach, variational cluster perturbation theory (or variational cluster approximation), and cellular dynamical mean-field theory.