In this review paper, we illustrate a possible route to obtain a reliable solution of the 2D Hubbard model and an explanation for some of the unconventional behaviours of underdoped high-T c cuprate superconductors within the framework of the composite operator method.The latter is described exhaustively in its fundamental philosophy, various ingredients and robust machinery to clarify the reasons behind its successful applications to many diverse strongly correlated systems, controversial phenomenologies and puzzling materials.
We present a method to treat the two-dimensional (2D) Hubbard model for parameter regimes which are relevant for the physics of the high-
Tc superconducting cuprates. Unlike previous attempts to attack this problem, our approach takes into account all fluctuations in different channels on equal footing and is able to treat reasonable large lattice sizes up to $32\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}32$. This is achieved by the following three-step procedure: (i) We transform the original problem to a representation (dual fermions) in which all purely local correlation effects from the dynamical mean field theory are already considered in the bare propagator and bare interaction of the new problem. (ii) The strong $1/{(i\ensuremath{\nu})}^{2}$ decay of the bare propagator allows us to integrate out all higher Matsubara frequencies aside from the lowest using low-order diagrams. The new effective action depends only on the two lowest Matsubara frequencies which allows us to (iii) apply the two-particle self-consistent parquet formalism, which takes into account the competition between different low-energy bosonic modes in an unbiased way, on much finer momentum grids than usual. In this way, we were able to map out the phase diagram of the 2D Hubbard model as a function of temperature and doping. Consistently with the experimental evidence for hole-doped cuprates and previous dynamical cluster approximation calculations, we find an antiferromagnetic region at low doping and a superconducting dome at higher doping. Our results also support the role of the van Hove singularity as an important ingredient for the high value of
Tc at optimal doping. At small doping, the destruction of antiferromagnetism is accompanied by an increase of charge fluctuations supporting the scenario of a phase-separated state driven by quantum critical fluctuations.
Understanding the origin of electron incoherence is believed to be the first step toward the resolution of the mysteries of the high-T
c cuprate superconductors. Such electron incoherence manifests itself most evidently in the non-Drude form of the optical absorption spectrum of the system. The spectral weight transfer related to such dissipative response, which is absent in conventional Fermi liquid metal, has direct consequence on the dc transport property of the system. However, a theoretical study of the optical conductivity of a strongly correlated model is a formidable task. Here we present an exact formula for the optical conductivity of the 2D Hubbard model from the low energy effective theory perspective. We show that the optical conductivity in Matsubara frequency of the 2D Hubbard model can be represented as the ensemble average of the optical conductivity of non-interacting systems in the background of fluctuating local moment. We find that such an ensemble average can be done exactly with a sign-problem-free Monte Carlo simulation if we assume the widely adopted Millis-Monien-Pines spin susceptibility for the fluctuating local moment. For thermal fluctuation of the local moment, our formula can be used to calculate directly the optical conductivity in real frequency which can be compared with the result of optical measurements in the cuprate superconductors.