Moving toward two dimensions in a
t-
J-
K model with frustrating ring exchange: the quest to stabilize a non-Fermi liquid
d-wave metal phase
Fermions in two dimensions, when subject to anisotropic spin-dependent hopping, can potentially give rise to unusual paired states in unpolarized mixtures that can behave as non-Fermi liquids. One possibility is a fully paired state with a gap for fermion excitations in which the Cooper pairs remain uncondensed. Such a ``Cooper-pair Bose-metal'' phase would be expected to have a singular Bose surface in momentum space. As demonstrated in the context of two-dimensional bosons hopping with a frustrating ring-exchange interaction, an analogous Bose-metal phase has a set of quasi-one-dimensional descendant states when put on a ladder geometry. Here we present a density matrix renormalization group study of the attractive Hubbard model with spin-dependent hopping on a two-leg ladder geometry. In our setup, one spin species moves preferentially along the leg direction, while the other does so along the rung direction. We find compelling evidence for the existence of a novel Cooper-pair Bose-metal phase in a region of the phase diagram at intermediate coupling. We further explore the phase diagram of this model as a function of hopping anisotropy, density, and interaction strength, finding a conventional superfluid phase as well as a phase of paired Cooper pairs with
d-wave symmetry, similar to the one found in models of hard-core bosons with ring exchange. We argue that simulating this model with cold Fermi gases on spin-dependent optical lattices is a promising direction for realizing exotic quantum states.
We establish compelling evidence for the existence of new quasi-one-dimensional descendants of the
d-wave Bose liquid (DBL), an exotic two-dimensional quantum phase of uncondensed itinerant bosons characterized by surfaces of gapless excitations in momentum space [O. I. Motrunich and M. P. A. Fisher, Phys. Rev. B 75, 235116 (2007)]. In particular, motivated by a strong-coupling analysis of the gauge theory for the DBL, we study a model of hard-core bosons moving on the
N-leg square ladder with frustrating four-site ring exchange. Here, we focus on four- and three-leg systems where we have identified two novel phases: a compressible gapless Bose metal on the four-leg ladder and an incompressible gapless Mott insulator on the three-leg ladder. The former is conducting along the ladder and has five gapless modes, one more than the number of legs. This represents a significant step forward in establishing the potential stability of the DBL in two dimensions. The latter, on the other hand, is a fundamentally quasi-one-dimensional phase that is insulating along the ladder but has two gapless modes and incommensurate power-law transverse density-density correlations. While we have already presented results on this latter phase elsewhere [M. S. Block et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 046402 (2011)], we will expand upon those results in this work. In both cases, we can understand the nature of the phase using slave-particle-inspired variational wave functions consisting of a product of two distinct Slater determinants, the properties of which compare impressively well to a density matrix renormalization group solution of the model Hamiltonian. Stability arguments are made in favor of both quantum phases by accessing the universal low-energy physics with a bosonization analysis of the appropriate quasi-1D gauge theory. We will briefly discuss the potential relevance of these findings to high-temperature superconductors, cold atomic gases, and frustrated quantum magnets.