The application of functional integral methods and the Hubbard--Stratonovich transformation to the Hubbard model is discussed. For the attractive case, using a simple gauge transformation of the superconducting order parameter field, the effective action for the low-energy phase excitations is derived. Inclusion of the electromagnetic field is straightforward. For the repulsive case at half--filling use of a fluctuating spin reference frame allows a derivation of the effective nonlinear sigma model for arbitrary coupling strength U. Results for the spin-wave velocity and the spin stiffness are obtained for arbitrary U. Away from half--filling, at large U an effective action for doped fermions and the spins is found which is related to the slave fermion formulation of the correlated fermion problem. The formalism is generalized to include the full SU(2)xSU(2) symmetry of the Hubbard model. This allows the derivation of a Ginzburg-Landau like theory that includes both particle-hole and particle-particle excitations. (paper at the NATO workshop on the Hubbard model, San Sebastian, Spain, oct. 1993)
We describe a low-temperature approach to the two-dimensional half-filled Hubbard model which allows us to study both antiferromagnetism and single-particle properties. This approach ignores amplitude fluctuations of the antiferromagnetic (AF) order parameter and is valid below a crossover temperature
TX which marks the onset of AF short-range order. Directional fluctuations (spin waves) are described by a nonlinear sigma model $(\mathrm{NL}\ensuremath{\sigma}\mathrm{M})$ that we derive from the Hubbard model. The parameters of the $\mathrm{NL}\ensuremath{\sigma}\mathrm{M}$---the spin stiffness and spin-wave velocity---are calculated as a function of the Coulomb repulsion U. The $\mathrm{NL}\ensuremath{\sigma}\mathrm{M}$ is solved by a saddle-point approximation within the
CP1 representation where the N\'eel field is parametrized by two Schwinger bosons. At zero temperature, there is always Bose condensation of the Schwinger bosons, which signals AF long-range order for any value of the Coulomb repulsion. At finite temperature, the AF long-range order is suppressed (in agreement with the Mermin-Wagner theorem), but the AF correlation length remains exponentially large. In the
CP1 representation, the fermion field is naturally expressed as the product of a Schwinger boson and a pseudofermion whose spin is quantized along the (fluctuating) N\'eel field. This allows us to write the fermion Green's function as the product (in direct space) of the Schwinger boson propagator (which is derived from the $\mathrm{NL}\ensuremath{\sigma}\mathrm{M})$ and the pseudofermion propagator. At zero temperature and weak coupling, our results are typical of a Slater antiferromagnet. The AF gap is exponentially small; there are well-defined Bogoliubov quasiparticles (QP's) (carrying most of the spectral weight) coexisting with a high-energy incoherent excitation background. As U increases, the Slater antiferromagnet progressively becomes a Mott-Heisenberg antiferromagnet. The Bogoliubov bands evolve into Mott-Hubbard bands separated by a large AF gap. A significant fraction of spectral weight is transferred from the Bogoliubov QP's to incoherent excitations. At finite temperature, there is a metal-insulator transition between a pseudogap phase at weak coupling and a Mott-Hubbard insulator at strong coupling. Finally, we point out that our results straightforwardly translate to the half-filled attractive Hubbard model, where the $\mathbf{q}=(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi})$ charge and
q=0 pairing fluctuations combine to form an order parameter with SO(3) symmetry.
We reconsider some of the previous studies of the interactions between the holes and the spin background in the Hubbard model in the small-doping limit. We show that the hole-hole interaction due to the transverse magnetization fluctuations (i.e., spin waves) is finite at arbitrarily small hole density. It may be comparable to the coupling due to the longitudinal magnetization fluctuations (which are the essence of the ``spin-bag'' mechanism of Schrieffer, Wen, and Zhang). This suggests that the two couplings should be considered simultaneously when studying the phase diagram of the lightly doped quantum antiferromagnets at the values of U/t relevant to the high-
Tc superconducting materials. We also show that in the large-(U/t) limit the Hubbard-model expressions for the coupling of holes reduce to those given by Shraiman and Siggia for the t-J model. This provides a link between the weak- and the strong-coupling theories of the doped quantum antiferromagnets, in the small-doping limit.
We study spin fluctuations in the spiral phase of the two-dimensional Hubbard model at low doping on the basis of the spin-particle-hole coherent-state path integral. In the strong correlation limit, we obtain an analytical expression of the spin-wave excitations over the entire Brillouin zone except in the vicinity of
q=0. We discuss the validity of the Hartree-Fock and random-phase approximations in the strong-coupling limit, and compare our results with previous numerical and analytical calculations. Although the spiral phase is unstable, as shown by a negative mean-field compressibility and the presence of imaginary spin-fluctuation modes, we expect the short-wavelength fluctuation modes (with real energies) to survive in the actual ground-state of the system.
We investigate the effect of hole doping on the strong-coupling Hubbard model at half filling in spatial dimensions D\ensuremath{\ge}1. We start with an antiferromagnetic mean-field description of the insulating state, and show that doping creates solitons in the antiferromagnetic background. In one dimension, the soliton is topological, spinless, and decoupled from the background antiferromagnetic fluctuations at low energies. In two dimensions and above, the soliton is nontopological, has spin quantum number 1/2, and is strongly coupled to the antiferromagnetic fluctuations. We derive the effective action governing the quasiparticle motion, study the properties of a single carrier, and comment on a possible description at finite concentration. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
We present an approach to the magnetic properties of the half-filled Hubbard model, based on an approximate mapping of its low-energy transverse spin excitations on to those of an effective underlying Heisenberg model, but with effective spin interactions which are self-consistently determined and not confined solely to nearest-neighbor couplings. The mapping is exact in strong-coupling and is found to be accurate over a very wide range of interaction strengths, down to weak coupling. At zero temperature, it permits ready evaluation at finite U of the one-loop effects of zero-point spin fluctuations on, e.g., the sublattice magnetization. At finite temperatures, thermodynamic properties of the system in the thermal paramagnet are studied via a physically transparent Onsager reaction field approach, which amounts to a self-consistent treatment of paramagnetic spin correlations. This is central not only in recovering the correct dimensionality dependence of antiferromagnetic long-ranged order, but also for the d=3 case of primary interest here yields a N\'eel temperature in close agreement with known strong- and weak-coupling limits. Spin correlation functions and magnetic susceptibilities also show very good agreement with quantum Monte Carlo calculations over an appreciable temperature range in which the low-lying transverse spin excitations are thermally dominant. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.