In cuprate superconductors, superconductivity is consistently accompanied by antiferromagnetism. This raises the question of a potential causal link between superconductivity and antiferromagnetic mechanisms. In this study, we consider the non-local Coulomb interaction and solve the single-particle Green function exactly. The exact solution shows the existence of strong inter-spin correlations in the absence of superexchange, eliminating the directional degrees of freedom for spin quantization in the Hatsugai-Kohmoto (HK) model. Strong Coulomb interactions force the energy band splitting into infinitely equidistant sub-bands weighted by a Poisson distribution, exhibiting boson properties (incoherent pairs of fermions) and non-Fermi liquids. Attractive pairing interactions caused by electron-phonon coupling open a pairing gap at the Fermi surface. Based on the Pauli exclusion principle, paired particles with the same spin quantization direction completely occupy the state below the gap, resulting in pairing insulators, superconducting instability, and especially antiferromagnetism. A pseudogap occurs when the higher split sub-band overlaps in energy with the lowest sub-band. The critical temperature Tc of superconductivity exhibits a multi-dome structure and peaks around the maximum density of states. The maximum Tc depends on splitting sub-bands and particle occupancy, consistent with experiments. This study concludes that the non-local effect preserves the Hubbard and HK models' characteristics while renormalizing the system to antiferromagnetism in pairing insulators and Pauli paramagnetism in weak semimetals.
In cuprate superconductors, superconductivity is consistently accompanied by antiferromagnetism. This raises the question of a potential causal link between superconductivity and antiferromagnetic mechanisms. In this study, we consider the non-local Coulomb interaction and solve the single-particle Green function exactly. The exact solution shows the existence of strong inter-spin correlations in the absence of superexchange, eliminating the directional degrees of freedom for spin quantization in the Hatsugai-Kohmoto (HK) model. Strong Coulomb interactions force the energy band splitting into infinitely equidistant sub-bands weighted by a Poisson distribution, exhibiting boson properties (incoherent pairs of fermions) and non-Fermi liquids. Attractive pairing interactions caused by electron-phonon coupling open a pairing gap at the Fermi surface. Based on the Pauli exclusion principle, paired particles with the same spin quantization direction completely occupy the state below the gap, resulting in pairing insulators, superconducting instability, and especially antiferromagnetism. A pseudogap occurs when the higher split sub-band overlaps in energy with the lowest sub-band. The critical temperature Tc of superconductivity exhibits a multi-dome structure and peaks around the maximum density of states. The maximum Tc depends on splitting sub-bands and particle occupancy, consistent with experiments. This study concludes that the non-local effect preserves the Hubbard and HK models' characteristics while renormalizing the system to antiferromagnetism in pairing insulators and Pauli paramagnetism in weak semimetals.
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.
We study superfluidity in strongly correlated systems by focusing three features as follows. First, interplay between superfluidity and other order parameters near quantum critical points is studied. The onset positions of the order parameters with or without superconductivity determines how they interact with each other. For the spin density wave (SDW) transition, we find that the quantum critical point shifts by order |∆|, where ∆ is pairing amplitude, so that the region of SDW order is smaller in the superconductor than in the metal. This shift is larger than the |∆|2 shift predicted by theories of competing orders which ignore Fermi surface effects. Second, we study a doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator motivated by copper based high temperature superconductors. Based on spin and charge fractionalization, the algebraic charge liquid phase whose bosonic spinons have energy gap but fermionic holons form Fermi surfaces and its superconductivity are studied. We show fluctuations of local SDW order orientation lead to d-wave superconductivity, and its quantum critical pairing mechanisms are investigated. Also, a theory of bound states between spinons and holons is studied. We show that the fractionalization induces a doubling electron-like quasiparticles, which naturally induces the fractionalized Fermi liquid. The bound state theory describes exotic properties of the underdoped Cuprates such as “nodal-antinodal dichotomy” at a mean field level description. At last, we study superfluidity of fermions in optical lattices near the Feshbach resonance. Due to divergence of scattering length at the resonance, universality is observed and characteristics of superfluidity has been studied. We extend such universal properties by considering superfluid-insulator transition with an even integer number of fermions per unit cell. The resulting insulator interpolates between a band insulator of fermions and a Mott insulator of fermion pairs.
This thesis deals with different aspects of high temperature superconductivity in hole-doped cuprates. We assume the t - J model to describe the CuO2 planes of cuprates and we use a spin-charge gauge approach with spin-charge separation to describe holes in terms of a spinless fermion carrying the charge (holon) and a neutral boson carrying spin 1/2 (spinon), coupled by a slave-particle gauge field. In this framework we consider the effects of the presence of a finite density of incoherent holon pairs in the normal state as a precursor of superconductivity. We show that it is possible to take such pairs into account through a strongly direction dependent spectral weight for holons, which suppresses quasi-particles starting from the anti-nodal directions, and a wave function renormalization for the slave particle gauge field. In this way we prove that, when temperature is reduced, the formation of holon pairs causes both the deviation from linearity of the resistivity and the deviation from the constant value of the Knight shift. Moreover we point out the need for a negative next-nearest-neighbor hopping term ((t - t' - J model) to get a good continuum limit and to evaluate the Knight shift. These results are obtained through a Green's function, which follows naturally from the formalism and analytically interpolates between a Fermi liquid-like behavior and a d-wave superconductor when the coherence length of the holon pair order parameter is increased. The system preserves a finite Fermi surface until the superconducting transition, where it reduces to four nodes. Finally when, at lower temperatures, both the holon pairs and the RVB spinon pairs condense we enter the superconducting phase. In this phase we study the magnetic excitations showing how to extend to spin waves the hourglass-shape dispersion, found for spinons near the antiferromagnetic vector, if a suitable local mechanism of attraction between spinon and anti-spinon is assumed. The resulting spin wave Green's function, whose imaginary part is directly comparable with experiments, generates the hourglass with a finite gap between the two branches. Since the U(1) slave-particle gauge field gains mass in the superconducting phase via Anderson-Higgs mechanism, we propose the necessary mechanism of attraction comes from the unbroken Z2 subgroup of the U(1) gauge group.
We study a generalized periodic Anderson model with on-site hybridization between wide- and narrow-band electrons and strong and local coupling with the lattice deformation. Provided that the interaction with the lattice is strong enough, the narrow-band electrons will be turned into small polarons which interact attractively with each other over short distances, leading to the formation of local pairs of narrow-band electrons. This leads to a pinning of the Fermi level which is due to the fact that narrow-band electrons exist only in pair states. By means of a generalized Schrieffer-Wolff transformation we eliminate hybridization and obtain an effective Hamiltonian which describes a contact interaction between local pairs and wide-band electrons as well as the direct hopping of local pairs and interparticle Coulomb interactions. In such a system the two types of mechanisms which can lead to superconductivity have been studied. The first one is due to direct local pair hopping and involves exclusively the narrow-band subsystem giving rise to a superconductivity analogous to superfluidity in 4He. The second one is due to a contact interaction between local pairs and pairs of wide-band electrons. This leads to a superconducting state involving both subsystems where the local pairs of the narrow-band subsystem induce Cooper pairing amongst the electrons of the wide-band subsystem. Consequently, the single-particle spectrum of the wide-band electrons opens up a gap around the position of the narrow band of electrons in pair states.We study the phase diagrams and the superconducting properties of two such coupled subsystems involving bosons and fermions as a function of the position of the narrow band with respect to the wide band (or the relative concentration of narrow and wide-band electrons). We also show that the critical temperature Tc and Tc/Eg(0) [Eg(0) being the energy gap] follow, in general, a strong and nonmonotonic variation. One of the most striking features of this system is that the pairs of narrow-band electrons exist in the normal phase and condense on approaching Tc from above. The existence of such a narrow boson band together with a fermion band in the normal phase leads to characteristic behavior in the specific heat over temperature variation being very similar to that observed in recent studies of nonclassical superconductors.
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 ′ = 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 ′ using a dual-fermion-inspired perturbation expansion. For a large next-nearest-neighbor hopping t′=−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 -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.
The CuO2 sheets common to the superconducting cuprates are believed to be characterized by a charge-transfer gap in their insulating antiferromagnetic state. The three-band Hubbard model with an on-site Cu Coulomb interaction Ud, which is large compared to the difference in energy \ensuremath{\varepsilon} between the O and Cu sites, provides a basic model for such a system. We have carried out Lanczos and Monte Carlo studies of a CuO2 lattice described by a three-band Hubbard model. For Ud large compared with \ensuremath{\varepsilon}, and \ensuremath{\varepsilon} comparable to or larger than the bandwidth of the lower hole band, we find strong antiferromagnetic correlations and evidence for a charge-transfer gap at a filling of one hole per Cu. The antiferromagnetic correlations decrease with either hole or electron doping, and we see that the additional holes go primarily on the O sites, while additional electrons go onto the Cu sites. For large values of the intersite Cu-O Coulomb interaction V, the hole-doped system exhibits a charge-transfer instability. As V is reduced, this is reflected as a peak in the charge-transfer susceptibility near \ensuremath{\varepsilon}+2V\ensuremath{\approxeq}Ud, which we find is washed out by the strong Cu-O hybridization at realistic values of V. Attractive pairing interactions are found in both the d-wave and extended s∗-wave channels near the antiferromagnetic boundary.