We develop a codebase for performing dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) and dual fermion (DF) calculations on the Hubbard model, by modifying, extending, and interfacing several pre-existing open-source codes. This is used to examine the Hubbard model on a face-centered cubic (fcc) lattice, to obtain numerically-exact results at the level of DMFT and investigate the effect of non-local electron correlations within the dual fermion approach. Our code centres around a modified implementation of the CTHYB quantum Monte Carlo technique used as an impurity solver. We discuss the modifications made, and validate our code by comparing its results to known results in the literature. The DF calculations are obtained by using the CTHYB results as inputs to an extension of the OpenDF code, which we likewise validate by comparison of our results to those of previous authors. We study the magnetic phase diagram, magnetic susceptibilities, and single-particle dynamics of the Hubbard model on the fcc lattice. Within DMFT a large FM region is found above half-filling, the phase boundary of which is located precisely by susceptibility and magnetisation calculations. A large AFM phase is found around and below half-filling with contributions from instabilities towards the X and W points. Single-particle spectra are obtained using the Maximum Entropy method for a wide range of temperatures and fillings demonstrating how the spectra change as the FM phase boundary is crossed. The non-local correlations taken into account by the DF approach reduce the critical temperatures of both the FM and AFM regions. Corrections in the FM region are small and strongly suggest that DMFT is able to capture the relevant physics in this region of the phase diagram. The code developed as part of this project opens the door for further investigations of the Hubbard model on the fcc, and other lattices, across wide ranges of parameter space.
We develop a codebase for performing dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) and dual fermion (DF) calculations on the Hubbard model, by modifying, extending, and interfacing several pre-existing open-source codes. This is used to examine the Hubbard model on a face-centered cubic (fcc) lattice, to obtain numerically-exact results at the level of DMFT and investigate the effect of non-local electron correlations within the dual fermion approach. Our code centres around a modified implementation of the CTHYB quantum Monte Carlo technique used as an impurity solver. We discuss the modifications made, and validate our code by comparing its results to known results in the literature. The DF calculations are obtained by using the CTHYB results as inputs to an extension of the OpenDF code, which we likewise validate by comparison of our results to those of previous authors. We study the magnetic phase diagram, magnetic susceptibilities, and single-particle dynamics of the Hubbard model on the fcc lattice. Within DMFT a large FM region is found above half-filling, the phase boundary of which is located precisely by susceptibility and magnetisation calculations. A large AFM phase is found around and below half-filling with contributions from instabilities towards the X and W points. Single-particle spectra are obtained using the Maximum Entropy method for a wide range of temperatures and fillings demonstrating how the spectra change as the FM phase boundary is crossed. The non-local correlations taken into account by the DF approach reduce the critical temperatures of both the FM and AFM regions. Corrections in the FM region are small and strongly suggest that DMFT is able to capture the relevant physics in this region of the phase diagram. The code developed as part of this project opens the door for further investigations of the Hubbard model on the fcc, and other lattices, across wide ranges of parameter space.
This thesis will describe efforts to enhance our ability to simulate the 2D Hubbard model. Chapter 2 provides a background on the main computational techniques used throughout the work, including quantum Monte Carlo (QMC), dynamical mean field theory (DMFT), the dynamical cluster approximation (DCA), the continuous time auxiliary field algorithm (CTAUX), and the Maximum Entropy Method (MEM) for numeric analytic continuation. Chapter 3 presents new work on applying Twisted Boundary Conditions to the DCA framework. This method is applied in a effort to access thermodynamic (i.e. large system) information about the Hubbard model without the immense computational expense required to simulate large lattices directly. Chapter 4 describes efforts to study the extended 2D Hubbard model, which re-introduces non-local interactions between electrons that drive the formation of charge ordered phases. The work includes a thorough analysis of the phase diagram of the model away from half-filling, as well as analysis of the effect of non-local interactions on anti-ferromagnetic fluctuations and competition between the charge order and AFM states. Chapter 5 includes a derivation of the dual fermions diagrammatic expansion and the dual fermions ladder approximation used to compute corrections to single site DMFT calculations. The method is applied to the 2D Hubbard model in order to study the evolution of its spectral function, Fermi surface, and momentum dependent mass renormalization as the temperature, interaction strength, and doping are changed. The great advantage of this method is that we are able to access arbitrary momenta throughout the Brillouin zone, in contrast to the limitation to a few cluster momenta that characterize cluster methods like DCA.
Disorder is ubiquitous in real materials and influences the physical properties like the conductivity to varying degrees. \nIf electron-electron interactions are strong, theoretical and numerical treatment of these systems becomes challenging. In this thesis a numerical approach is developed to address these systems, \ntreating both interactions and disorder on equal footing. \nThe approach is based on the dual fermion approach for interacting systems developed by Rubtsov et al. \nTerletska et al. applied the ideas of the dual fermion approach to disordered non-interacting systems. In this approach, the replica trick is used to integrate out the disorder in favor of an effective electron-electron interaction. \nWe extended the approach from Terletska et al. to treat disordered interacting systems. \n \nDual Fermions allow to take into account non-local fluctuations by means of a perturbative expansion around an impurity problem. The impurity reference system is determined self-consistently, analogously to the dynamical mean-field \ntheory. \nThe perturbative expansion is expected to yield good results for small and large values of interaction strength and disorder. A priori, it is not clear what to expect for intermediate values, \nbut experience shows that oftentimes good results are obtained for this region. \n \nAn advantage of the dual fermion approach is that there is no sign-problem for a single orbital model if quantum Monte Carlo is used to solve the interacting reference system. \nAdditionally, perturbation theory is usually numerically much cheaper than fully solving an interacting lattice or cluster problem. \nThus, the dual fermion approach allows to address regions of parameter space that are not accessible to lattice quantum Monte Carlo calculations or cluster extension of dynamical mean-field theory. \nCluster extensions of the dynamical mean-field theory are for example the dynamical cluster approximation or the cellular dynamical mean-field theory. \n \nThe new approach is benchmarked with respect to the Anderson-Falicov-Kimball model. The Anderson-Hubbard model is the main application. \nFor both models, the algorithm is tested in one dimension for the single particle Green function and compared to the dynamical cluster approximation to estimate the quality of the results. \nThe Anderson-Falicov-Kimball model is studied further in two dimensions and the phase diagram on the disorder-interaction plane is calculated from both the single particle Green function and the dc conductivity. \n \nFor the Anderson-Hubbard model, the antiferromagnetic phase transition, the Mott transition and the Anderson transition are investigated in three dimensions. The dynamical mean-field theory results are \nqualitatively confirmed for the most part. Quantitative corrections are in agreement with dynamical cluster approximation results, thus confirming the validity of the results. \nWe found a qualitative difference between the dual fermion approach and dynamical mean-field theory for the temperature dependence of the hysteresis of the double occupancy. The dual fermion result \nshows a decreasing lower critical interaction strength for decreasing temperature, which is in contrast with the dynamical mean-field result that shows an increase of the lower critical interaction strength. \nThis behavior happens for small temperatures that are not accessible using for example the dynamical cluster approximation, thus highlighting the usefulness of the dual fermion approach. \nWe found this behavior for all values of the disorder that we considered.
In this thesis, we tackle various problems in strongly correlated electron systems, which can be addressed properly via the non-perturbative dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) approach using the continuous time quantum Monte Carlo method as an impurity solver. First, we revisit the old Nagaoka ferromagnetism problem in the U=oo Hubbard model and study the stability of the ferromagnetic state as a function of the temperature, the doping level, and the next-nearest-neighbor hopping t'. We then address the nature of the Mott transition in the two-dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling using cluster DMFT. Cluster DMFT can incorporate the short-range correlations beyond DMFT by extending the spatial range in which correlations are treated exactly to a finite cluster size. The non-local correlations reduce substantially the critical interaction U and modify the shape of the transition lines in the phase diagram. We then concentrate on the calculation of two-particle response functions from the ab initio perspective by means of computing the one-particle excitation spectrum using the combination of the density functional theory (DFT) and DMFT and extracting the two-particle irreducible vertex function from a local two-particle Green's function computed within DMFT. In particular, we derive the equations for calculating the magnetic/charge susceptibility and the pairing susceptibility in superconductivity. This approach is applied to the Hubbard model and the periodic Anderson model and we determine the phase diagram of magnetism and superconductivity in these models. We show that the superconducting phase is indeed stable near the magnetic phase where the pairing interaction mediated by spin fluctuations is dominantly enhanced. The non-local correlation effect to superconductivity is also discussed using the dual fermion approach and the dynamical vertex approximation. We finally apply the vertex function approach within DFT+DMFT to a Fe-based superconductor, BaFe2As2, and compute the dynamical magnetic susceptibility in this material. Our calculation results show a good agreement with the magnetic excitation spectra observed in a neutron scattering experiment. The response function calculation method derived in this thesis can capture both a localized and an itinerant nature of collective excitations in strongly correlated electron systems.
Disorder is ubiquitous in real materials and influences the physical properties like the conductivity to varying degrees. If electron-electron interactions are strong, theoretical and numerical treatment of these systems becomes challenging. In this thesis a numerical approach is developed to address these systems, treating both interactions and disorder on equal footing. The approach is based on the dual fermion approach for interacting systems developed by Rubtsov et al. Terletska et al. applied the ideas of the dual fermion approach to disordered non-interacting systems. In this approach, the replica trick is used to integrate out the disorder in favor of an effective electron-electron interaction. We extended the approach from Terletska et al. to treat disordered interacting systems. Dual Fermions allow to take into account non-local fluctuations by means of a perturbative expansion around an impurity problem. The impurity reference system is determined self-consistently, analogously to the dynamical mean-field theory. The perturbative expansion is expected to yield good results for small and large values of interaction strength and disorder. A priori, it is not clear what to expect for intermediate values, but experience shows that oftentimes good results are obtained for this region. An advantage of the dual fermion approach is that there is no sign-problem for a single orbital model if quantum Monte Carlo is used to solve the interacting reference system. Additionally, perturbation theory is usually numerically much cheaper than fully solving an interacting lattice or cluster problem. Thus, the dual fermion approach allows to address regions of parameter space that are not accessible to lattice quantum Monte Carlo calculations or cluster extension of dynamical mean-field theory. Cluster extensions of the dynamical mean-field theory are for example the dynamical cluster approximation or the cellular dynamical mean-field theory. The new approach is benchmarked with respect to the Anderson-Falicov-Kimball model. The Anderson-Hubbard model is the main application. For both models, the algorithm is tested in one dimension for the single particle Green function and compared to the dynamical cluster approximation to estimate the quality of the results. The Anderson-Falicov-Kimball model is studied further in two dimensions and the phase diagram on the disorder-interaction plane is calculated from both the single particle Green function and the dc conductivity. For the Anderson-Hubbard model, the antiferromagnetic phase transition, the Mott transition and the Anderson transition are investigated in three dimensions. The dynamical mean-field theory results are qualitatively confirmed for the most part. Quantitative corrections are in agreement with dynamical cluster approximation results, thus confirming the validity of the results. We found a qualitative difference between the dual fermion approach and dynamical mean-field theory for the temperature dependence of the hysteresis of the double occupancy. The dual fermion result shows a decreasing lower critical interaction strength for decreasing temperature, which is in contrast with the dynamical mean-field result that shows an increase of the lower critical interaction strength. This behavior happens for small temperatures that are not accessible using for example the dynamical cluster approximation, thus highlighting the usefulness of the dual fermion approach. We found this behavior for all values of the disorder that we considered.
In this thesis, we use the Dual Fermion approximation (DF) to study the Hubbard model on the 2D square lattice by using two-particle quantities such as susceptibilities and full vertex functions. In the first chapter we give an introduction to the strongly correlated systems including their definitions and features. Then, in the next chapter, to solve our model we present some numerical methods. The numerical methods that we used for our study are the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), the continuous-time auxiliary field impurity solver (CTAUX), Fluctuation diagnostics and Dual Fermion approximation (DF). The DF method provides high-resolution results for single-particle quantities such as the density of states (DOS) and Self Energy as well two particles spin susceptibility and vertex functions. With these results, we can present high-resolution results of the fluctuation diagnostics method with minimal computational expense. We examine the full Q-vector dependence of the extended self-energy at the Nodal and Antinodal k-points and provide interpretation for the claim that spin fluctuations are responsible for the observed metal-to-insulator behaviour.
The dual fermion approach provides a formally exact prescription for calculating properties of a correlated electron system in terms of a diagrammatic expansion around dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). Most practical implementations, however, neglect higher-order interaction vertices beyond two-particle scattering in the dual effective action and further truncate the diagrammatic expansion in the two-particle scattering vertex to a leading-order or ladder-type approximation. In this work, we compute the dual fermion expansion for the two-dimensional Hubbard model including all diagram topologies with two-particle interactions to high orders by means of a stochastic diagrammatic Monte Carlo algorithm. We benchmark the obtained self-energy against numerically exact diagrammatic determinant Monte Carlo simulations to systematically assess convergence of the dual fermion series and the validity of these approximations. We observe that, from high temperatures down to the vicinity of the DMFT N\'eel transition, the dual fermion series converges very quickly to the exact solution in the whole range of Hubbard interactions considered ($4\ensuremath{\le}U/t\ensuremath{\le}12$), implying that contributions from higher-order vertices are small. As the temperature is lowered further, we observe slower series convergence, convergence to incorrect solutions, and ultimately divergence. This happens in a regime where magnetic correlations become significant. We find, however, that the self-consistent particle-hole ladder approximation yields reasonable and often even highly accurate results in this regime.