Two aspects of strongly correlated electron systems are studied in this thesis. Hubbard-type models are thought to be at the basis of high-critical-temperature superconductivity. One interaction which has not had much study is the nearest-neighbour hopping of on-site singlet pairs. We refine earlier renormalization group arguments and, using the density-matrix renormalization group method, numerically confirm their prediction that a spin gap opens at infinitesimal pair-hopping amplitude V > 0 in the one-dimensional tight-binding model. We also find a phase separation transition at a finite V > 0 as well as a spin-gap transition at a finite V < 0. The exotic magnetic behaviour of heavy-fermion materials involves an interplay between the screening of local moments from each other and the formation of a magnetic state of long range order. While the single-impurity Kondo Hamiltonian is thought to model some aspects of this behaviour, the properties of the Kondo lattice model away from half-filling are largely unknown. We determine the presence of a spin-gap region in the phase diagram of the one-dimensional Heisenberg-Kondo lattice model and make predictions about certain concealed dimerization order parameters.
Two aspects of strongly correlated electron systems are studied in this thesis. Hubbard-type models are thought to be at the basis of high-critical-temperature superconductivity. One interaction which has not had much study is the nearest-neighbour hopping of on-site singlet pairs. We refine earlier renormalization group arguments and, using the density-matrix renormalization group method, numerically confirm their prediction that a spin gap opens at infinitesimal pair-hopping amplitude V > 0 in the one-dimensional tight-binding model. We also find a phase separation transition at a finite V > 0 as well as a spin-gap transition at a finite V < 0. The exotic magnetic behaviour of heavy-fermion materials involves an interplay between the screening of local moments from each other and the formation of a magnetic state of long range order. While the single-impurity Kondo Hamiltonian is thought to model some aspects of this behaviour, the properties of the Kondo lattice model away from half-filling are largely unknown. We determine the presence of a spin-gap region in the phase diagram of the one-dimensional Heisenberg-Kondo lattice model and make predictions about certain concealed dimerization order parameters.
We investigate the magnetic order and related strongly correlated effects in a one-dimensional Ising-Kondo lattice with transverse field. This model is the anisotropic limit of the conventional isotropic Kondo lattice model, in the sense that the itinerant electrons interact with the localized magnetic moments via only longitudinal Kondo exchange. Adopting the numerical density-matrix renormalization group method, we map out the ground-state phase diagram in various parameter spaces. Depending on the Kondo coupling and filling number, three distinct phases, including a metallic paramagnetic, a metallic ferromagnetic, and a gapped spin-density wave phase, are obtained. The spin-density wave is characterized by an ordering wave vector, which coincides with the nesting wave vector of the Fermi surface. This makes the corresponding magnetic transition a spin analog of the Peierls transition occurring in the one-dimensional metal. Moreover, by analyzing the momentum distribution function and charge correlation function, the conduction electrons are shown to behave like free spinless fermions in the ferromagnetic phase. We finally discuss the effect of the repulsive Hubbard interaction between conduction electrons. Our paper enriches the Kondo physics and deepens the current understanding of the heavy fermion compounds.
Materials with strongly correlated electrons show a multitude of unconventional phenomena, such as superconductivity or magnetism, that cannot be explained in a single-particle picture and necessitate to take many-body effects into account. A route to explain the origin of these phenomena consists in constructing effective models for these materials that are then solved, often using numerical techniques. Paradigmatic models for two different classes of strongly correlated electron systems are investigated in this thesis: The Hubbard model is a paradigmatic model to describe the Mott metal-insulator transition (MIT) and the Kondo lattice model describes the low-energy physics in heavy fermion compounds. Both models are analyzed numerically using different variations of a quantum cluster technique, the variational cluster approximation (VCA). The first part focuses on the MIT, as it is investigated experimentally in quasi-two-dimensional charge-transfer salts. Its nature and associated universality class are still heavily discussed and both experiments and theoretical approaches come to different conclusions. In this thesis, the Mott transition is investigated on an anisotropic two-dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling. By using a control parameter, which induces this anisotropy, strong evidence for Mott quantum criticality is found in weakly coupled Hubbard chains. The results at zero temperature show that the second-order critical end point Tc of the interaction-driven metal-insulator transition can be tuned down to zero at strong anisotropy. Further results for the antiferromagnetic phase suggest a similar picture and motivate adding the anisotropy as a new axis in the phase diagram to account for a low-temperature critical end point of the Mott transition. The second part of this thesis focuses on unconventional phases that emerge in a paradigmatic model for heavy fermion systems, the Kondo lattice model. Using the VCA, the two-dimensional Kondo lattice model is investigated in the paramagnetic phase as well as in phases with broken symmetry. An antiferromagnetic phase at weak coupling and a phase with Kondo-singlet formation at strong coupling are analyzed. Within the antiferromagnetically ordered region, two phases with different Fermi-surface topology, which are separated by a discontinuous transition, are identified. The model is also tested for s-wave superconductivity as found recently using dynamical mean-field theory, but no indications for robust local pairing are seen within VCA. Instead, nodal d-wave superconductivity is found and analyzed in a large range of couplings and electron fillings, and its interplay with antiferromagnetic order at weak coupling is discussed. This motivates further studies on extended models that might allow for a close comparison with experiments on heavy fermion systems. Understanding the formation of unconventional phases in strongly correlated electron systems is not only of fundamental interest, but it is also essential for designing new functional materials. Although the results of approximate cluster techniques have to be handled with care, the new aspects presented in this thesis pave the way for further investigations in this direction.
Strongly correlated electron systems show a rich variety of astonishing physical phenomena. However, the strong interactions make the theoretical description of these systems a highly non-trivial task. Even the simplest models cannot be solved exactly, and one has to reside to approximative solutions, which often cover only certain aspects of the physics contained in these models. In recent years progress has been made in the theoretical description of correlated lattice systems through the mapping of lattice models onto effective impurity models. The most prominent example is the mapping of the Hubbard model onto an effective single impurity Anderson model (SIAM). Within this description both models feature the prominent Kondo effect, which leads to the emergence of low energy quasiparticles. The occurrence of such excitations is a result of the dynamical screening of local magnetic moments and the corresponding formation of a low temperature Fermi liquid phase. On the other hand these theories usually fail in the description of non Fermi liquid behavior, which is for example observed in the normal state of high temperature superconductors and some Heavy-Fermion systems. Strong nonlocal fluctuations drive the dynamics of these systems. In the theoretical treatment, due to the mapping of the lattice problem to an effective single impurity problem, these fluctuations are not adequately described.\\\\ In this thesis a new self-consistent approach for the inclusion of spatial correlations is presented for the Hubbard model. In contrast to existing quantum cluster theories in this field, the approach allows for the simultaneous description of short and long range pair correlations. Due to the intimate connection of this new lattice theory with the two impurity Anderson model (TIAM) a thorough numerical investigation of the TIAM is undertaken in this thesis. The competition of the Kondo effect with the RKKY interactions is studied in great detail. Furthermore two new solvers for the TIAM are introduced, which extend existing non crossing approximations for the SIAM.
This work deals with the calculation of magnetic properties for strongly correlated electron systems. One of most important model in this field of physics is the Hubbard model. It describes the situation of, for example, transition metal oxides. This particular class of materials is known for magnetic order at low temperatures. The reason for this and at the same time the difficulty for theoretically describing them are strong electron-electron-interactions. For calculating the magnetic properties I used the dynamical mean field theory (DMFT), which relates the lattice model to an impurity model. Even this simplified model is highly non trivial. For solving it I used two different renormalization group approaches. I used the numerical renormalization group (NRG) and the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and also compared both methods with each other. These modern non-perturbative techniques are able to solve the impurity model, which then can be used for calculating the magnetic phases of the lattice models. In this work I mainly focused on the frustrated one-orbital Hubbard model and the two-orbital Hubbard model. Frustration represents a situation where the aimed magnetic solution cannot be stabilized for the used lattice. Frustration can, for example, be generated by long range hopping of the electrons. This can lead to a situation where new magnetic phases are stable. For systematically analyzing the effects of frustration, I performed calculations for a Bethe lattice with nearest and next nearest neighbor hopping, for which I varied the strength of the interaction and the next nearest neighbor hopping. Another very important aspect for describing transition metal oxides are orbital degrees of freedom. For analyzing the influence of these degrees of freedom I used the two-orbital Hubbard model, which shows new effects.
We study the one-dimensional Hubbard model with nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor hopping integrals by using the density-matrix renormalization group method and Hartree-Fock approximation. Based on the calculated results for the spin gap, total-spin quantum number, and Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid parameter, we determine the ground-state phase diagram of the model in the entire filling and wide parameter region. We show that, in contrast to the weak-coupling regime where a spin-gapped liquid phase is predicted in the region with four Fermi points, the spin gap vanishes in a substantial region in the strong-coupling regime. It is remarkable that a large variety of phases, such as the paramagnetic metallic phase, spin-gapped liquid phase, singlet and triplet superconducting phases, and fully polarized ferromagnetic phase, appear in such a simple model in the strong-coupling regime.
We show, using density-matrix renormalization-group calculations complemented by field-theoretic arguments, that the spin-gapped phase of the one dimensional Kondo-Heisenberg model exhibits quasi-long-range superconducting correlations only at a nonzero momentum. The local correlations in this phase resemble those of the pair-density-wave state which was recently proposed to describe the phenomenology of the striped ordered high-temperature superconductor La(2-x)Ba(x)CuO₄, in which the spin, charge, and superconducting orders are strongly intertwined.