We investigate a minimal two-orbital Hubbard model with intra- and inter-orbital nearest-neighbor hopping
t and
t~, as well as intra- and inter-orbital density-density interactions
U and
U′ by means of variational ansätze based on Jastrow-Slater wave functions within quantum Monte Carlo techniques. To focus on the electronic mechanisms of superconductivity, we restrict the variational ansätze to uniform nonmagnetic states with an explicit pairing amplitude and compute the pairing correlations as a function of filling and model parameters. At
U/t=10, superconducting correlations are highly enhanced by the presence of inter-orbital terms,
U′ and
t~. For
t~=0, a finite value of
U′ effectively screens the intra-orbital repulsion
U, producing a shift in the superconducting dome. Consequently, inter-orbital repulsion yields a sizable increase in electron pairing compared to the single-orbital baseline. Furthermore, introducing a finite
t~ provides an additional boost to superconducting correlations, an effect driven by the simultaneous presence of flat and broad bands in the electronic structure.
As a model for high-
Tc superconductors, a two-band Hubbard model is proposed. When the Coulomb interactions are introduced between the \ensuremath{\alpha} and \ensuremath{\beta} orbitals, an effective attraction of carriers in the \ensuremath{\beta} (doped) band is shown to arise in an appropriate condition. The quantum Monte Carlo method is used to confirm the occurrence of Cooper pairing in finite two-band Hubbard systems. The attraction, which also appears in the density-density correlation, enhances the on-site singlet Cooper pair-pair correlation in the \ensuremath{\beta} band and suppresses the antiferromagnetic spin-spin correlation in the \ensuremath{\alpha} band. The criterion for the pairing and the nature of the pairing are discussed. Thus we provide a mechanism of superconductivity specific to strongly correlated two-band systems.
Using the variational cluster approach based on the self-energy functional theory, we study the possible occurrence of excitonic order and superconductivity in the two-orbital Hubbard model with intra- and inter-orbital Coulomb interactions. It is known that an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator state appears in the regime of strong intra-orbital interaction, a band insulator state appears in the regime of strong inter-orbital interaction, and an excitonic insulator state appears between them. In addition to these states, we find that the
s±-wave superconducting state appears in the small-correlation regime, and the
dx2−y2-wave superconducting state appears on the boundary of the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator state. We calculate the single-particle spectral function of the model and compare the band gap formation due to the superconducting and excitonic orders.
Two-band models (one wide band and one narrow band close to the Fermi energy) and local-pair models (periodic Anderson model) of high- T c superconductors give rise to the same equilibrium thermodynamics despite the different physical pictures underlying the models. The low-energy excitations in these models are, however, not of the same character, which leads to a qualitative difference in their non-equilibrium properties. In particular, this is true for the interband optical absorption at threshold. Using the Golden rule for absorption and a mean-field treatment of the superconducting state, we calculate the threshold absorption at zero temperature for three different cases: a two-band model without additional correlation besides the interband interaction between Cooper pairs; a two-band model with attractive correlation (negative- U ) between electrons on the same site in the narrow band; and a local-pair model with the same correlation as in the previous model, but with a pair interaction due to the hybridization (in second order) of the wide band and the local states. In the two latter models (which are closely related), we assume that the local-pair correlation energy is much higher than T c . In the uncorrelated case the absorption has a square-root singularity at threshold, which is due to the diverging density of states of the one-particle excitations. In the negative- U correlated cases no single-particle transitions are possible at threshold, and only direct two-photon two-particle processes are possible. Further, in the local-pair model the hybridization can act together with a photon, giving an additional one-photon two-electron threshold in the absorption.
By means of the exact-diagonalization method we have studied the finite-size two-band model with the interband pair-transfer interaction by calculating the superconducting (SC) correlation function P s etc. in the ground state. Occurrence of SC was clearly indicated by the increase of P s . The diagram of the observed SC region was constructed in the plane of the relative position of the second band versus on-site Coulomb energy U . In the low-density limit it proved close to the region where a negative- U situation is realized by the pair-transfer interaction. On the high-density side, the SC region was found to be more extended than the latter in accord with the previous interband-ladder-diagram results. Inclusion of the exchange interaction was found to reduce the SC region in a restricted region where two bands substantially share electrons. The two-band situations in cuprates are argued to be relevant to the high T c through the present mechanism.