The attractive Hubbard model for normal and superconducting ground states is examined for arbitrary electron concentration by the use of the slave-boson mean-field approximation (SBMFA) technique. This approach, at a saddle-point level, is equivalent to the Gutzwiller approximation. Several superfluid characteristics of the model are shown for hypercubic lattices of all dimensions, including , and a comparison with the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer Hartree-Fock approximation (BCS-HFA) calculations and exact results is made. Our results show quantitative and qualitative corrections of the SBMFA to the HFA. The improvement of the SBMFA over the HFA diminishes with increasing lattice dimensionality. We have also evaluated the energy difference between the superconducting and the normal states; this is compared with available results for the superconducting critical temperatures in various dimensions and Uemura-type plots are obtained. The results confirm and substantiate the assertion of a continuous evolution of the superfluid properties of the model from the weak-coupling (BCS-like) to the strong-coupling (composite-boson superconductivity) limit.
We analyze the competition between antiferromagnetism and superconductivity in the two-dimensional Hubbard model by combining a functional renormalization group flow with a mean-field theory for spontaneous symmetry breaking. Effective interactions are computed by integrating out states above a scale ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{\mathrm{MF}}$ in one-loop approximation, which captures in particular the generation of an attraction in the
d-wave Cooper channel from fluctuations in the particle-hole channel. These effective interactions are then used as an input for a mean-field treatment of the remaining low-energy states, with antiferromagnetism, singlet superconductivity, and triplet $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pairing as the possible order parameters. Antiferromagnetism and superconductivity suppress each other, leaving only a small region in parameter space where both orders can coexist with a sizable order parameter for each. Triplet $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pairing appears generically in the coexistence region, but its feedback on the other order parameters is very small.
Conventional Hartree-Fock mean field theory is used, for the first time, to investigate the full two-dimensional t-J model. To date, all other nontrivial mean field approaches modify the Hamiltonian or violate the double occupancy constraint. Unlike conventional mean field theory, these methods do not give variational results for the t-J model. The mean field phase diagram of the t-J model predicts enhanced superconductivity at the crossover between an insulating phase at low doping and a metallic phase at moderate doping. This behavior is remarkably similar to that of high temperature superconductors, for which the model is expected to provide a good description. In the mean field approximation, the t-J model is described by self-interacting spinless fermions hopping on a background lattice with spiral antiferromagnetic order. The interaction is attractive and high temperature superconductivity arises from the narrow bandwidth at the insulator to metal crossover.