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Correlation effects in low dimensional quantum systems

Chun Yang

Published Jan 1, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This dissertation discussed four low-dimensional systems: Hubbard ladder and its 2D extension, anisotropic Hubbard ladder, one-dimensional two-orbital t-J model, and Kondo model. All of them are of strongly correlated. Doped cuprates, as strongly correlated systems, have attracted a lot of attention in the condensed matter physics community, not just from the purely theoretical perspective, but also due to the novel applications beyond the conventional semiconductor paradigm. They display complicated phase diagram, defying the conventional rigid band theory, shaking our common sense and driving us to wrestle with many-body physics. With the aid of advanced experimental techniques such as ARPES, its various exotic electronic structure, such as waterfalls, hole pockets, Fermi arcs and kinks have been unveiled and remain open to interpretation. To attack such complicated problems, people usually build various models to mimic the CuO2 planes, which is the common feature of various cuprate compounds and is believed to be mainly responsible for their complicated properties, especially the high temperature superconductivity. In Chapter 3, we simulated the spectral properties of the 2- leg single-band Hubbard ladder and its 2-dimensional extension at and away from half-lling using the numerical tool: the combination of Cluster Perturbation Theory (CPT) with the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method (tDMRG) as a solver. The main features of the spectrum can be described with a mean-eld dispersion, with kinks and pseudogap traced back to scattering between spin and charge degrees of freedom. As a bonus, we nd that the spectrum of hubbard ladder involves spin-polaron, the bound state of spinon and holon. Interacting one-dimensional electron systems generically behave dierent from higher dimensional systems in the sense that its low-energy excitations are described by Luttinger liquid theory as collective bosonic modes carrying spin and charge separately, the so-called spinons and holons, rather than the coherent quasi-particles in Fermi liquid theory. This phenomenon is known as spin-charge separation, an intrinsic property of 1D system. It can be thought of as a particular case of electron fractionalization. When multiple 1D chains get coupled, how the picture changes? In Chapter 4, we study the spectral function of the anisotropic 2-leg Hubbard ladder, one of the simplest multiple-chain systems. The spectrum can be understood as the scattering resultants of spinon and holons: As the inter-chain hopping is increased, the continuum in the bonding channel moves to higher energies and spinon and holon branches merge into a single coherent quasi-particle band. Simultaneously, the spectrum undergoes a crossover from a regime with two minima at incommensurate values of kx (a Mott insulator), to one with a single minimum at kx = (a band insulator). In addition, the spectrum contains a continuum of scattering states consisting of a triplon and a polaron, accompanied by the formation of bound states with higher spin 3 2 , ferromagnetic \spin bags" in which the hole can move freely. To analyze the formation of quasi-particle, we study the time-evolution of charge and spin degrees of freedom in real space after a hole is injected, which indicates that incoherent holons and spinons can emerge into polarons, that can propagate coherently, after a characterstic time . Multiorbital systems can involve Mott and Hund physics, and are rich in various phenomena, including orbital selective Mott transitions, spin-orbital separations, and pairing density wave due to the complex interplay between spin, charge and orbital degrees of freedom. Therefore, it can capture many unique features in real strongly correlated systems, such as iron pnictides and ruthenates, and thus attract a lot of investigations. In Chapter 5, we comprehensively study a one-dimensional two-orbital model at and below quarter lling, which realizes a number of unconventional phases, by means of DMRG and some analytical calculations. In particular, we nd that the system supports an extensive density wave in which excitons quasicondense with nite center-of-mass momentum. In this phase, excitons behave as hardcore bosons without charge order. In addition, excitons can pair to form biexcitons in a state that is close to a charge density wave instability. Finally, a genuine orbital-selective paired state (metallic plus spin-gapped superconductor) can be realized when pairing dominates over the interorbital repulsion. Kondo problem, as one of the most studied and best understood correlated systems, has been studied by various techniques, but the internal structure of its ground state has two deeply con icting pictures: At strong coupling limit, the system is essentially composed of a scattering center, which is a tightly bound singlet formed by the impurity and a localized electron at r0, and the remaining conduction electrons that are decoupled to the impurity and remain almost \free". At weak enough couplings, the singlet extends to the entire volume and the impurity will couple mostly to one electron at the Fermi level. In chapter 6, we provide a coherent picture to unveil the puzzle in the context of quantum information theory by deconstructing the Kondo singlet, both in real and energy space, and measuring the spin correlations between the impurity and the invididual free electron eigenstate based on two dierent measures. As a bonus, we can identify \projected natural orbitals" that can be used as a \good" approximate wavefunctions for simulations, and a quasi-order parameter that determines the crossover from weak to strong coupling regimes and furthermore oers the means to measure the Kondo screening length K. This screening length might be used to characterize the \size" of the Kondo cloud.

DOI
10.17760/d20317971

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This dissertation discussed four low-dimensional systems: Hubbard ladder and its 2D extension, anisotropic Hubbard ladder, one-dimensional two-orbital t-J model, and Kondo model. All of them are of strongly correlated. Doped cuprates, as strongly correlated systems, have attracted a lot of attention in the condensed matter physics community, not just from the purely theoretical perspective, but also due to the novel applications beyond the conventional semiconductor paradigm. They display complicated phase diagram, defying the conventional rigid band theory, shaking our common sense and driving us to wrestle with many-body physics. With the aid of advanced experimental techniques such as ARPES, its various exotic electronic structure, such as waterfalls, hole pockets, Fermi arcs and kinks have been unveiled and remain open to interpretation. To attack such complicated problems, people usually build various models to mimic the CuO2 planes, which is the common feature of various cuprate compounds and is believed to be mainly responsible for their complicated properties, especially the high temperature superconductivity. In Chapter 3, we simulated the spectral properties of the 2- leg single-band Hubbard ladder and its 2-dimensional extension at and away from half-lling using the numerical tool: the combination of Cluster Perturbation Theory (CPT) with the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method (tDMRG) as a solver. The main features of the spectrum can be described with a mean-eld dispersion, with kinks and pseudogap traced back to scattering between spin and charge degrees of freedom. As a bonus, we nd that the spectrum of hubbard ladder involves spin-polaron, the bound state of spinon and holon. Interacting one-dimensional electron systems generically behave dierent from higher dimensional systems in the sense that its low-energy excitations are described by Luttinger liquid theory as collective bosonic modes carrying spin and charge separately, the so-called spinons and holons, rather than the coherent quasi-particles in Fermi liquid theory. This phenomenon is known as spin-charge separation, an intrinsic property of 1D system. It can be thought of as a particular case of electron fractionalization. When multiple 1D chains get coupled, how the picture changes? In Chapter 4, we study the spectral function of the anisotropic 2-leg Hubbard ladder, one of the simplest multiple-chain systems. The spectrum can be understood as the scattering resultants of spinon and holons: As the inter-chain hopping is increased, the continuum in the bonding channel moves to higher energies and spinon and holon branches merge into a single coherent quasi-particle band. Simultaneously, the spectrum undergoes a crossover from a regime with two minima at incommensurate values of kx (a Mott insulator), to one with a single minimum at kx = (a band insulator). In addition, the spectrum contains a continuum of scattering states consisting of a triplon and a polaron, accompanied by the formation of bound states with higher spin 3 2 , ferromagnetic \spin bags" in which the hole can move freely. To analyze the formation of quasi-particle, we study the time-evolution of charge and spin degrees of freedom in real space after a hole is injected, which indicates that incoherent holons and spinons can emerge into polarons, that can propagate coherently, after a characterstic time . Multiorbital systems can involve Mott and Hund physics, and are rich in various phenomena, including orbital selective Mott transitions, spin-orbital separations, and pairing density wave due to the complex interplay between spin, charge and orbital degrees of freedom. Therefore, it can capture many unique features in real strongly correlated systems, such as iron pnictides and ruthenates, and thus attract a lot of investigations. In Chapter 5, we comprehensively study a one-dimensional two-orbital model at and below quarter lling, which realizes a number of unconventional phases, by means of DMRG and some analytical calculations. In particular, we nd that the system supports an extensive density wave in which excitons quasicondense with nite center-of-mass momentum. In this phase, excitons behave as hardcore bosons without charge order. In addition, excitons can pair to form biexcitons in a state that is close to a charge density wave instability. Finally, a genuine orbital-selective paired state (metallic plus spin-gapped superconductor) can be realized when pairing dominates over the interorbital repulsion. Kondo problem, as one of the most studied and best understood correlated systems, has been studied by various techniques, but the internal structure of its ground state has two deeply con icting pictures: At strong coupling limit, the system is essentially composed of a scattering center, which is a tightly bound singlet formed by the impurity and a localized electron at r0, and the remaining conduction electrons that are decoupled to the impurity and remain almost \free". At weak enough couplings, the singlet extends to the entire volume and the impurity will couple mostly to one electron at the Fermi level. In chapter 6, we provide a coherent picture to unveil the puzzle in the context of quantum information theory by deconstructing the Kondo singlet, both in real and energy space, and measuring the spin correlations between the impurity and the invididual free electron eigenstate based on two dierent measures. As a bonus, we can identify \projected natural orbitals" that can be used as a \good" approximate wavefunctions for simulations, and a quasi-order parameter that determines the crossover from weak to strong coupling regimes and furthermore oers the means to measure the Kondo screening length K. This screening length might be used to characterize the \size" of the Kondo cloud.
Since the advent of high-TcT_cTc​ cuprate superconductors in 1986, strongly correlated electron systems have attracted much attention. Since the cuprates are essentially two-dimensional, low-dimensional systems have moved into the focus of condensed-matter theory. From a theoretical point of view, one-dimensional systems are of particular interest because there are exact numerical and analytical methods which permit detailed studies and deep insights into the many-body problem. In the first part of this thesis, using the numerically exact methods Exact Diagonalization and the Density-Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG), we investigate the properties of the Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid which is the generic metallic state of matter in one dimension. In particular, we concentrate on the investigation of the so-called Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid parameter which determines the critical exponent α\alphaα for the density of states near the Fermi energy. Experimental results for some quasi one-dimensional materials report α≳1\alpha \gtrsim 1α≳1, which would imply Kρ≲0.17K_\rho \lesssim 0.17Kρ​≲0.17, a value which cannot be reconciled with the bare Hubbard model where KρH≥0.5K_\rho^H \geq 0.5KρH​≥0.5, i.e., αH≲1/8\alpha^H \lesssim 1/8αH≲1/8. We develop new accurate numerical methods to obtain KρK_\rhoKρ​ and investigate how to obtain such small values for KρK_\rhoKρ​ for slightly doped charge-density-wave insulators. In the second part of this thesis, using the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz (TBA) as exact analytical method, we investigate the one-dimensional Hubbard model in the spindisordered regime, which is characterized by the temperature being much larger than the magnetic energy scale but small compared to the Mott–Hubbard gap. Our study is motivated by the controversy about the Mott–Hubbard insulator in infinite dimensions whose ground state is also spin-disordered. In this system the determination of the precise value of the critical interaction strength Uc where the Mott–Hubbard gap closes is still unsolved. Therefore, we provide an example of a Hubbard-type model with a disordered spin background which can be solved exactly. The thermodynamics of our model can be understood in terms of gapped charged excitations with an effective dispersion which are decoupled form the spin degrees of freedom; the latter contribute only entropically. An interpretation of this regime in terms of a putative interacting-electron system at zero temperature leads to a metal-insulator transition at a finite interaction strength above which the gap opens linearly. Our exact results indicate that the strong-coupling expansion of the ground-state energy cannot be used to locate UcU_cUc​. However, the strong-coupling expansion of the gap permits a reliable extrapolation of the critical interaction strength.
Materials with strongly correlated electrons show a multitude of unconventional phenomena, such as superconductivity or magnetism, that cannot be explained in a single-particle picture and necessitate to take many-body effects into account. A route to explain the origin of these phenomena consists in constructing effective models for these materials that are then solved, often using numerical techniques. Paradigmatic models for two different classes of strongly correlated electron systems are investigated in this thesis: The Hubbard model is a paradigmatic model to describe the Mott metal-insulator transition (MIT) and the Kondo lattice model describes the low-energy physics in heavy fermion compounds. Both models are analyzed numerically using different variations of a quantum cluster technique, the variational cluster approximation (VCA). The first part focuses on the MIT, as it is investigated experimentally in quasi-two-dimensional charge-transfer salts. Its nature and associated universality class are still heavily discussed and both experiments and theoretical approaches come to different conclusions. In this thesis, the Mott transition is investigated on an anisotropic two-dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling. By using a control parameter, which induces this anisotropy, strong evidence for Mott quantum criticality is found in weakly coupled Hubbard chains. The results at zero temperature show that the second-order critical end point Tc of the interaction-driven metal-insulator transition can be tuned down to zero at strong anisotropy. Further results for the antiferromagnetic phase suggest a similar picture and motivate adding the anisotropy as a new axis in the phase diagram to account for a low-temperature critical end point of the Mott transition. The second part of this thesis focuses on unconventional phases that emerge in a paradigmatic model for heavy fermion systems, the Kondo lattice model. Using the VCA, the two-dimensional Kondo lattice model is investigated in the paramagnetic phase as well as in phases with broken symmetry. An antiferromagnetic phase at weak coupling and a phase with Kondo-singlet formation at strong coupling are analyzed. Within the antiferromagnetically ordered region, two phases with different Fermi-surface topology, which are separated by a discontinuous transition, are identified. The model is also tested for s-wave superconductivity as found recently using dynamical mean-field theory, but no indications for robust local pairing are seen within VCA. Instead, nodal d-wave superconductivity is found and analyzed in a large range of couplings and electron fillings, and its interplay with antiferromagnetic order at weak coupling is discussed. This motivates further studies on extended models that might allow for a close comparison with experiments on heavy fermion systems. Understanding the formation of unconventional phases in strongly correlated electron systems is not only of fundamental interest, but it is also essential for designing new functional materials. Although the results of approximate cluster techniques have to be handled with care, the new aspects presented in this thesis pave the way for further investigations in this direction.
The Hubbard model is a simple but profound theoretical tool for understanding the physics underlying strongly correlated systems. This phenomenology includes, but is not limited to, metal-insulating transitions, charge and spin order (charge density/spin density waves), superconducting phases, non-Fermi liquid physics, among others. Examining one dimensional physical models described by the Hubbard Hamiltonian can teach us much about the related physics of higher dimensional systems. Applying advanced numerical computational techniques such as density matrix numerical renormalization group (DMRG) to one-dimensional manypbody model Hamiltonians allows for the calculation of ground state energies and dynamical spectral functions with extremely high precision and accuracy. This thesis explores the application of DMRG numerical techniques to one-dimensional physical systems described by Hamiltonians beyond the conventional Hubbard model, and the nuanced physical effects observed for these systems across various regimes and phases. A Wannier Hubbard chain composed of non-orthogonal overlapping atomic orbitals was transformed to an orthogonal atomic basis using a non-unitary Lowdin transformation. The calculation of energies, dynamical spectral functions and the photoemission spectrum for this Wannier Hubbard chain revealed phases not previously observed for Hubbard chains at half-filling. Additional analysis and calculations were performed for a CuO chain described by the Luther-Emery Hamiltonian that epitomizes charge-transfer physics. The motivation for studying this CuO chain was previous literature on transition metal oxides (TMOs) and the mapping of multiband Hamiltonians to single band models in certain energy regimes. Finally, we performed computational analysis for a spin-3/2 generalized Hubbard chain. By spanning the full phase space of our spin-3/2 Hubbard chain in terms of chemical potential μ\muμ and external magnetic field hhh we observed non-typical Cooper pairing states and novel phases for different symmetries of our Hamiltonian.--Author's abstract
We study the effects of charge degrees of freedom on the spin excitation dynamics in quasi-one-dimensional magnetic materials. Using the density matrix renormalization group method, we calculate the dynamical spin structure factor of the Hubbard model at half electronic filling on a chain and on a ladder geometry, and compare the results with those obtained using the Heisenberg model, where charge degrees of freedom are considered frozen. For both chains and two-leg ladders, we find that the Hubbard model spectrum qualitatively resembles the Heisenberg spectrum---with low-energy peaks resembling spinonic excitations---already at intermediate on-site repulsion as small as $U/t\ensuremath{\sim}2--3$, although ratios of peak intensities at different momenta continue evolving with increasing U/tU/tU/t converging only slowly to the Heisenberg limit. We discuss the implications of these results for neutron scattering experiments and we propose criteria to establish the values of U/tU/tU/t of quasi-one-dimensional systems described by one-orbital Hubbard models from experimental information.
The Fermi liquid theory is a central concept in modern condensed matter physics used to describe conventional metals. A state of this universality class consists of well-defined quasiparticles, which occupy a finite number of states within a Fermi volume defined in momentum space. According to the Luttinger’s theorem, such a state encloses a Fermi volume proportional to the electron density modulo the filled bands if no symmetry is broken. In the past decades strong deviations from Fermi liquid theory have been observed in the scaling behavior of thermodynamic observables in different materials, among which are for instance cuprates and iron pnictides. This thesis is about two prototypical systems that can not be described by Fermi liquid theory. The first part of this work investigates two-dimensional effective models, which are in a Mott insulating state at half-filling and have a finite conductivity when doped with holes. In such a Mott insulating state, the charge carriers are strongly localized due to the Coulomb repulsion. Hence, strong correlations are assumed to have a strong impact on the formation of the ground state, also in the regime of small hole concentration. In a first project we have used a so-called spinon dopon mean-field theory to represent the two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model with strong on-site repulsive interaction in effective degrees of freedom, in which the holes can be embedded into a quantum spin liquid. The corresponding SU(2) invariant ground state belongs to the class of fractionalized Fermi liquids. In a second project we investigate a quantum dimer model, an effective model based on a Hilbert space spanned by short range singlets and bound states of holes and spins. The focus here is on the calculation of the hole-part of the electron spectral function by using exact diagonalization and its comparison with two analytic methods, a diagrammatic computation based on the Bethe-Salpeter equation and a so-called two-mode approximation. The electron spectral function shows a similar analytic form in momentum space between nodal and antinodal point when compared to results from photoemission spectroscopy experiments on cuprates. Furthermore, in a subsequent work we calculate the exact ground state of the quantum dimer model along a certain parameter line. In order to analyze the behavior of the elctron spectral function when increasing the density of holes, we investigate the Fermi-Hubbard model in a current project using a dynamical mean-field approach. To solve the 4-site cluster impurity problem, we use a numerical renormalization group approach. However, numerical limitations force us to restrict the analysis to spin-polarized baths. According to the spectral data, the system is similar to the SU(2) invariant case at half-filling in a Mott insulating state and posseses a momentum-selective energy gap at finite doping. The topology of the Fermi surface shows a Lifshitz transition when increasing the hole concentration. Here, the curvature of the Fermi surface changes from electron- to hole-like. For comparison we apply the dynamical mean-field theory also to the quantum dimer model and observe that the electron spectral functions at finite doping are qualitatively similar to that of the two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model. The second half of the work is about Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory, which is used to describe the low-energy effective degrees of freedom of one-dimensional systems. Here, we first discuss a conceptional extension of the operator-based bosonization theory for one-dimensional systems. This extension is especially suited for inhomogeneous one-dimensional systems. First, we investigate a one-dimensional system with a local interation potential and compute an exact solution of the single particle propagator at T = 0. The critical exponent of the single particle propagator has an unconventional form as a function of the microscopic Tomonaga-Luttinger parameters, which is not covered by the original Luttinger paradigm postulated by F. Duncan M. Haldane. In a second project on one-dimensional systems, we study the impact of scattering processes among bosonic low-energy excitations on the thermalization process. Such scattering processes are irrelevant on large length scales, however strongly affect the dynamics. In our analytic analysis we focus on a experimental setup, where a one-dimensional Bose gas is instantaneously splitted in two identical, however strongly correlated, halves of one-dimensional electronic systems. In the following, the corresponding non-equilibrium state runs through multiple regimes in time, such as a metastable prethermalization regime. However, above a certain threshold in time such scattering processes cause an effective thermalization of the system. In order to demonstrate this, we compute the kinetic equation in the Keldysh field integral formalism from a diagrammatic expansion based on a self-consistent Born approximation.
The Chapter 2 is devoted to the study of the transport properties of a quantum wire, described by the Tomonaga-Luttinger model, in the presence of a backscattering potential provided by several point-like or extended time-dependent impurities (barriers) and find regimes of conductance enhancement. In Chapte 3 we study a set of crossed 1D systems, which are coupled with each other via tunnelling at the crossings. Concentrating on the case of a single crossing, we were able to explain recent experiments on crossed metallic and semiconducting nanotubes, which showed the presence of localized states in the region of crossing. The Chapter 4 treats the effects of disorder and interactions in a quantum Hall ferromagnet. We study the problem by projecting the original fermionic Hamiltonian into magnon states, which behave as bosons in the vicinity of the ferromagnetic ground state. The approach permits the reformulation of a strongly interacting model into a non-interacting one. The latter is a non-perturbative scheme that consists in treating the two-particle neutral excitations of the electron system as a bosonic single-particle. Indeed, the employment of bosonization facilitates the inclusion of disorder in the study of the system. It has been shown previously that disorder may drive a quantum phase transition in the Hall ferromagnet. However, such studies have been either carried out in the framework of the nonlinear sigma model, as an effective low-energy theory, or included the long-range Coulomb interaction in a quantum description only up to the Hartree-Fock level. Here, we establish the occurrence of a disorder-driven quantum phase transition from a ferromagnetic 2DEG to a spin glass phase by taking into account interactions between electrons up to the random phase approximation level in a fully quantum description. In the Chapter 5 we derive and discuss an experimentally realistic model describing ultracold atoms in an optical lattice including a commensurate, but staggered, Zeeman field. The resulting band structure is quite exotic; fermions in the third band have an unusual rounded picture-frame Fermi surface (essentially two concentric squircles), leading to imperfect nesting. We develop a generalized theory describing the spin and charge degrees of freedom simultaneously, and show that the system can develop a coupled spin-charge-density wave order. This ordering is absent in studies of the Hubbard model that treat spin and charge density separately.