The fermion sign plays a dominant role in Fermi liquid theory. However, in Mott insulators, the strong Coulomb interaction suppresses the charge fluctuations and eliminates the fermion signs due to electron permutation. In this article, we first review the phase string theory of the Hubbard model for a bipartite lattice, which unifies the Fermi liquid at weak coupling and the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator at strong coupling. We first derive the exact sign structure of the Hubbard model for an arbitrary Coulomb interaction U. In small U limit, the conventional fermion sign is restored, while at large U limit, it leads to the phase string sign structure of the t-J model. For half filling, we construct an electron fractionalization representation, in which chargons and spinons are coupled to each other via emergent mutual Chern-Simons gauge fields. The corresponding ground state ansatz and low energy effective theory capture the ground state phase diagram of the Hubbard model qualitatively. For weak coupling regime, the Fermi liquid quasiparticle is formed by the bound state of a chargon and a spinon, and the long range phase coherence is determined by the background spin correlation. The Mott transition can be realized either by forming the chargon gap or by condensing the background spinons.
The fermion sign plays a dominant role in Fermi liquid theory. However, in Mott insulators, the strong Coulomb interaction suppresses the charge fluctuations and eliminates the fermion signs due to electron permutation. In this article, we first review the phase string theory of the Hubbard model for a bipartite lattice, which unifies the Fermi liquid at weak coupling and the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator at strong coupling. We first derive the exact sign structure of the Hubbard model for an arbitrary Coulomb interaction U. In small U limit, the conventional fermion sign is restored, while at large U limit, it leads to the phase string sign structure of the t-J model. For half filling, we construct an electron fractionalization representation, in which chargons and spinons are coupled to each other via emergent mutual Chern-Simons gauge fields. The corresponding ground state ansatz and low energy effective theory capture the ground state phase diagram of the Hubbard model qualitatively. For weak coupling regime, the Fermi liquid quasiparticle is formed by the bound state of a chargon and a spinon, and the long range phase coherence is determined by the background spin correlation. The Mott transition can be realized either by forming the chargon gap or by condensing the background spinons.
The Fermi sign structure plays a crucial role for a Landau's Fermi liquid. In this work, we identify the exact sign structure for the bipartite Hubbard model at an arbitrary strength of the on-site Coulomb repulsion U. This general sign structure naturally reproduces the conventional fermion signs in the small U limit, and the phase string signs of the $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model in the large U limit. We focus on the half-filling case as an example to illustrate why such a generic sign structure is important to understand the transition from the weakly correlated Fermi-liquid regime to the strongly correlated Mott regime. In particular, we show that an electron fractionalization scheme with emergent partons and mutual Chern-Simons gauge fields provides a suitable framework to accurately handle the singular sign structure in two dimensions. A ground-state ansatz at half filling with incorporating the sign structure and the specific electron fractionalization is also proposed.
A chiral spin liquid (CSL) phase has been recently reported in the Hubbard model on a triangular lattice. It emerges in an intermediate coupling regime at half-filling, which is sandwiched between a ${120}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase and a metallic phase as a function of on-site repulsion U. In this work, we examine the mechanism of the CSL and complex phase diagram via analytic analysis and numerical density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. First, we identify an exact Berry-phase-like sign structure in the partition function of the model at arbitrary U, which is originated from the Fermi sign structure at U=0.The spin and charge degrees of freedom are generally entangled via a singular phase string in such a many-body sign structure. In the large-U limit, the suppression of the charge fluctuation at half-filling can render the phase string ineffective, resulting in the AFM order. However, if one precisely switches off such a phase string in the DMRG calculation, the ${120}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ AFM is shown to survive all the way down to a much weaker U without the emergence of the CSL and metallic phases. It indicates that the phase-string sign structure plays the key role to mediate the mutual interaction between the charge and spin fluctuations, which results in the CSL and metallic phases at finite U. General implications for the Mott physics in the Hubbard model will also be discussed.
We discuss the appearance of quantum orders in the Hubbard model for interacting electrons, at half-filling. Such phases do not have local order parameters and need to be characterized by the quantum mechanical properties of their ground state. On one hand, we study the Mott transition from a metal to a spin liquid insulator in two dimensions, of potential relevance to some layered organic compounds. The correlation-driven transition occurs at fixed filling and involves fractionalization of the electron: upon entering the insulator, a Fermi surface of neutral spinons coupled to an internal gauge field emerges. We focus on the transport properties near the quantum critical point and find that the emergent gauge fluctuations play a key role in determining the universal scaling. Second, motivated by a class of three-dimensional transition metal oxides, the pyrochlore iridates, we study the interplay of non-trivial band topology and correlations. Building on the strong spin orbit coupling in these compounds, we construct a general microscopic Hubbard model and determine its mean-field phase diagram, which contains topological insulators, Weyl semimetals, axion insulators and various antiferromagnets. We also discuss the effects many-body correlations on theses phases. We close by examining a fractionalized topological insulator that combines the two main themes of the thesis: fractionalization and non-trivial band topology. Specifically, we study how the two-dimensional protected surface states of a topological Mott insulator interact with a three-dimensional emergent gauge field. Various correlation effects on observables are identified.
Understanding the doped Mott insulator is a central challenge in condensed matter physics. In this work, we first explicitly identify a new sign structure in the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model on the square lattice that replaces the conventional Fermi statistics for weakly interacting electrons. Then we show that the singular, i.e., the phase-string part of the sign structure in the partition function can be precisely turned off in a modified model. The density matrix renormalization group method is then employed to study these two models comparatively on finite-size systems, which is designed to unveil the consequences of the phase-string component. We find that the hole pairing is present not only in the quasi-long-range superconducting phase but also in the stripe phase of the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model. However, once the phase-string is switched off, both the superconducting and stripe orders together with the underlying hole pairing disappear. The corresponding ground state reduces to a trivial Fermi-liquid-like state with small hole Fermi pockets that is decoupled from the antiferromagnetic spin background. It is in sharp contrast to the original $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model where large Fermi surfaces can be restored in the stripe phase found at ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}/t<0$ or the superconducting phase at ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}/t>0$ in the six-leg ladder calculation. Our study clearly demonstrates that the strong correlation effect in doped Mott insulator should be mainly attributed to the long-range quantum entanglement between the spin and charge, which is, nonperturbatively, beyond a simple spin-charge separation under the no double occupancy constraint.
A chiral spin liquid (CSL) phase has been recently reported in the Hubbard model on a triangular lattice at half-filling. It emerges in an intermediate coupling regime, which is sandwiched between a 120∘ antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase and a metallic phase as a function of on-site repulsion U. In this work, we examine how the charge fluctuation may cause the CSL and complex phase diagram. We first identify an exact sign structure of the model at arbitrary temperature, sample size, and doping, which is reduced from the original Fermi exchange signs of the electrons by finite U. In particular, the spin and charge degrees of freedom are generally entangled via the phase-string in the sign structure. By precisely switching off such a phase-string, the CSL phase is shown to disappear, with only the 120∘ AFM order remaining down to weak U by a density matrix renormalization group calculation. Here the charge fluctuation is effectively decoupled from the AFM background, which is a 120∘ AFM order due to a geometric Berry phase in the sign structure of the triangular lattice. General implications for the Mott physics will also be discussed.
Abstract We present a T = 0 K renormalization group (RG) phase diagram for the electronic Hubbard model in two dimensions on the square lattice at half filling. The RG procedure treats quantum fluctuations in the single particle occupation number nonperturbatively via the unitarily decoupling of one electronic state at every RG step. The resulting phase diagram thus possesses the quantum fluctuation energy scale (ω) as one of its axes. A relation is derived between ω and the effective temperature scale upto which gapless, as well as emergent gapped phases can be obtained. We find that the normal and insulating phases of the half-filled Hubbard model correspond, for any on-site repulsion, to a marginal Fermi liquid normal phase and a topologically-ordered gapped Mott insulating liquid respectively. The marginal Fermi liquid is found to arise from singular forward scattering in directions normal to the nested Fermi surface, while singular backscattering events lead to Mott liquid state. The transition between these two phases involves passage through a pseudogapped phase bookended by Fermi surface topology-changing Lifshitz transitions. The pseudogap phase is observed to arise from the electronic differentiation encoded within the nested Fermi surface, and involves the gradual gapping of the Fermi surface from antinodes to nodes via charge and spin excitations that are mutually entangled. We obtain effective Hamiltonians for various phases, as well as wavefunctions for the low-energy many-body eigenstates of the Mott liquid. Benchmarking of the ground-state energy per particle and the double-occupancy fraction for the Mott liquid against existing numerical results yields excellent agreement. Presence of a Néel ordering symmetry-breaking perturbation in the RG leads to an antiferromagnetic spin-ordered charge insulating Mott state. Our results thus offer novel insights on a variety of aspects of the Mott–Hubbard problem, and can be extended to the doped system.