Inhomogeneities on various length scales suggesting phase separation seem to be a generic feature of hole-doped high-temperature superconducting cuprates. Also firmly established is the d-wave symmetry of the superconducting state. The interplay of superconductivity and phase separation has been noted in previous mean-field studies of correlated electron models. To further explore this issue in a more rigorous approach we have conducted quantum Monte Carlo calculations of a two-dimensional Hubbard model with nearest-neighbor attractive interaction. For a vanishing on-site repulsion, the result agrees with that of Micnas, Ranninger, and Robaszkiewicz [Phys. Rev. B 39, 11 653 (1989)], and indicates that for a given strength of the attractive interaction, homogeneous d-wave superconducting phase can exist only above a critical doping concentration, below which phase separation occurs. A finite on-site repulsion modifies the phase separation behavior. A stronger d-wave pairing correlation is seen in the inhomogeneous phase compared to the homogeneous phase.
Recent experimental results of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy suggested that an additional strong nearest neighbor attraction in the Hubbard model might be significant for the doped cuprates. The stripe-ordered patterns, which are formed by the inhomogeneous distribution of spin, charge, and pairing correlations in
CuO2 planes, are a well-known feature of the doped cuprates. By employing constrained path quantum Monte Carlo, we examine the effect of the nearest neighbor attraction on a two-dimensional repulsive Hubbard model. Within and across the stripe regions, the ground-state spin correlations and the
d-wave pairing correlation are calculated. We found that the spin-spin correlation is the largest when the interstripe region is nearly half filled, and we also found the
d-wave superconducting correlation of the neighboring sites is enhanced in the presence of the stripe pattern. This reveals the crucial effects of the strong nearest neighbor attraction on superconductivity in doped cuprates.
Our previous mean-field study concerning superconducting pairings in the extended Hubbard model with on-site repulsive and intersite attractive interaction and arbitrary electron density is extended to include the effects of nearest-neighbor exchange (
J) and correlated hopping (
K) interaction. Detailed numerical analysis of
s-,
p-, and
d-wave pairing solutions is performed for the two-dimensional square lattice with nearest- (
t) and next-nearest- (
t2) neighbor hopping, and the resulting mutual stability phase diagrams are given as a function of band filling and the interaction parameters. Antiferromagnetic exchange can enhance both the
d-wave and the extended
s-wave pairing. If it prevails over the repulsive intersite density-density interaction, such a term can be a leading mechanism for superconductivity. However, its effects strongly depend on the band filling and the
tt2 ratio, giving in particular for
t2=0 s-wave (
d-wave) pairing as most favorable in the low (high) density limit, but increasing
t2 can even reverse this tendency. The correlated hopping term which breaks the electron-hole symmetry affects
s-wave pairing mostly. A condensation transition (phase separation), possible in the presence of the attractive density-density interaction, is also analyzed within the random-phase approximation, and stability conditions of such an electron droplet phase with respect to other types of ordering are determined as a function of the band filling for the two-dimensional square lattice.
We study, through the variational Monte Carlo technique, an extended Hubbard model away from half filled band density which contains two competing nearest-neighbor interactions: a superexchange J favoring d-wave superconductivity and a repulsion V opposing it. We find that the on-site repulsion U effectively enhances the strength of J while suppressing that of V, thus favoring superconductivity. This result shows that attractions which do not involve charge fluctuations are very well equipped against strong electron-electron repulsion so much to get advantage from it.
To understand the interplay of d-wave superconductivity and antiferromagnetism, we consider a two-dimensional extended Hubbard model with nearest neighbor attractive interaction. The Hamiltonian is solved in the mean field approximation on a finite lattice. In the impurity-free case, the minimum energy solutions show phase separation as predicted previously based on free energy argument. The phase separation tendency implies that the system can be easily rendered inhomogeneous by a small external perturbation. Explicit solutions of a model including weak impurity potentials are indeed inhomogeneous in the spin-density-wave and d-wave pairing order parameters. Relevance of the results to the inhomogeneous cuprate superconductors is discussed.
The two-dimensional (2D) Hubbard model is widely believed to contain the key ingredients of high-temperature superconductivity in cuprate materials. Here, we report a constrained path quantum Monte Carlo (CPQMC) study of the square-lattice extended Hubbard model with on-site Coulomb repulsion U and nearest-neighbor (NN) electron attraction V. Upon doping
δ= 0.125, we find that the NN electron attraction V can notably drive an exotic spin-triplet (p-wave) superconducting (SC) phase, and enhance the p-wave SC correlations with the increase of V. But in the intermediate coupling regime, the
dx2−y2-wave (d-wave) does not significantly increase with the increase of V, indicating that the d-wave is not affected by V in strongly correlated system. Besides the pairing phase, a spin density wave (SDW) only exists near the half-filling in the particle-hole channel, and doping disrupts the formation of SDW order. Especially, the NN electron attraction V has no significant effect on SDW, reflecting the consistent relationship between d-wave SC and spin correlation. Moreover, as doping increases, the dominant region of p-wave also expands, further suppressing the presence of d-wave, which may help explain the disappearance of d-wave SC in overdoped cuprate superconductors. We also find the d-wave exhibits a singular nonzero (near point (
2π/3,π)) condensation structure in momentum space, resulting in a different staggered behavior in the x and y direction with distance in real space. On the contrary, the p-wave condensed at zero momentum, and the p-wave correlation exhibits exponential decay in real space. Our work suggests the p-wave SC region can be induced and further broadened by the NN electron attraction V, offering a feasible mechanism to realize p-wave superconductivity in realistic cuprate materials.