The optical conductivity for the Hubbard and t-J models is calculated numerically by use of a Lanczos algorithm. One- and two-dimensional systems of up to 16 sites with periodic and open boundary conditions are examined for the t-J model, as well as Hubbard-model systems of up to 9 sites. In the one-dimensional case, the low-frequency part of the conductivity away from half filling is shown to consist almost entirely of a single \ensuremath{\delta} function (Drude peak) even for J of the order of t. This is a direct consequence of the decoupling of charge and spin in one dimension. In two dimensions there is an additional broad absorption band above the Drude peak, consistent with the experimentally observed midinfrared band in the copper oxide superconductors. The importance of vertex corrections is demonstrated by comparing the exact conductivity with the convolution integral of the exact single-particle Green's function.
The optical conductivity, \ensuremath{\sigma}(\ensuremath{\omega}), of the two-dimensional one-band Hubbard model is calculated at finite temperature using exact diagonalization techniques on finite clusters. The in-plane dc resistivity, ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\rho}}}_{\mathit{a}\mathit{b}}$, is also evalauted. We find that at large U/t and temperature T, ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\rho}}}_{\mathit{a}\mathit{b}}$ is approximately linear with temperature. We also observed that \ensuremath{\sigma}(\ensuremath{\omega}) displays charge excitations, a midinfrared (MIR) band, and a Drude peak. The combination of the Drude peak and the MIR oscillator strengths leads to a conductivity that decays slower than 1/${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}^{2}$ at energies smaller than the insulator gap near half filling.
A Monte Carlo maximum-entropy calculation of the optical conductivity of the infinite-dimensional Hubbard model is presented. We show that the optical conductivity displays the anomalies found in the cuprate superconductors, including a Drude width which grows linearly with temperature, a Drude weight which grows linearly with doping, and a temperature and doping-dependent mid-IR peak. These anomalies arise as a consequence of the dynamical generation of a quasiparticle band at the Fermi energy as T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0, and are a generic property of the strongly correlated Hubbard model in all dimensions greater than one.
We study the Cu and O spectral density of states and the optical conductivity of CuO
2 planes using an effective generalized one-band Hubbard model derived from the extended three-band Hubbard model. We solve exactly a square cluster of 10 unit cells and average the results over all possible boundary conditions, which leads to smooth functions of frequency. Upon doping, the Fermi energy jumps to Zhang-Rice states which are connected to the rest of the valence band (in contrast to an isolated band in the middle of the gap). The transfer of spectral weight depends on the parameters of the original three-band model not only through the one-band effective parameters but also through the relevant matrix elements. We discuss the evolution of the gap upon doping. The optical conductivity of the doped system shows a mid-infrared peak due to intraband transitions, a pseudogap, and a high-frequency part related to interband transitions. Its shape and integrated weight up to a given frequency (including the Drude weight) agree qualitatively with experiments in the cuprates for low to moderate doping levels, but significant deviations exist for doping
x>0.3.
We derive analytical expressions for the spectral moments of the dynamical response functions of the Hubbard model using the high-temperature series expansion. We consider generic dimension
d as well as the infinite-
d limit, arbitrary electron density
n, and both finite and infinite repulsion
U. We use moment-reconstruction methods to obtain the one-electron spectral function, the self-energy, and the optical conductivity. They are all smooth functions at high temperature and, at large
U, they are featureless with characteristic widths of the order of the lattice hopping parameter
t. In the infinite-
d limit, we compare the series expansion results with accurate numerical renormalization group and interaction expansion quantum Monte Carlo results. We find excellent agreement down to surprisingly low temperatures, throughout most of the bad-metal regime, which applies for $T\ensuremath{\gtrsim}(1\ensuremath{-}n)D$, the Brinkman-Rice scale. The resistivity increases linearly in
T at high temperature without saturation. This results from the
1/T behavior of the compressibility or kinetic energy, which play the role of the effective carrier number. In contrast, the scattering time (or diffusion constant) saturates at high
T. We find that $\ensuremath{\sigma}(n,T)\ensuremath{\approx}(1\ensuremath{-}n)\ensuremath{\sigma}(n=0,T)$ to a very good approximation for all
n, with $\ensuremath{\sigma}(n=0,T)\ensuremath{\propto}t/T$ at high temperatures. The saturation at small
n occurs due to a compensation between the density dependence of the effective number of carriers and that of the scattering time. The
T dependence of the resistivity displays a kneelike feature which signals a crossover to the intermediate-temperature regime where the diffusion constant (or scattering time) starts increasing with decreasing
T. At high temperatures, the thermopower obeys the Heikes formula, while the Wiedemann-Franz law is violated with the Lorenz number vanishing as
1/T2. The relevance of our calculations to experiments probing high-temperature transport in materials with strong electronic correlations or ultracold atomic gases in an optical lattice is briefly discussed.