We study the evolution of the optical conductivity in the t-J model with temperature and doping using the Extended Dynamical Cluster Approximation. The cluster approach results in an optical mass which is doping independent near half filling. The transition to the superconducting state in the overdoped regime is characterized by a decrease in the hole kinetic energy, in contrast to the underdoped side where kinetic energy of holes increases upon superfluid condensation. In both regimes, the optical conductivity displays anomalous transfers of spectral weight over a broad frequency region.
We study the evolution of the optical conductivity in the t-J model with temperature and doping using the Extended Dynamical Cluster Approximation. The cluster approach results in an optical mass which is doping independent near half filling. The transition to the superconducting state in the overdoped regime is characterized by a decrease in the hole kinetic energy, in contrast to the underdoped side where kinetic energy of holes increases upon superfluid condensation. In both regimes, the optical conductivity displays anomalous transfers of spectral weight over a broad frequency region.
We use cluster dynamical mean-field theory to study the simplest models of correlated electrons, the Hubbard model and the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model. We use a plaquette embedded in a medium as a reference frame to compute and interpret the physical properties of these models. We study various observables such as electronic lifetimes, one electron spectra, optical conductivities, superconducting stiffness, and the spin response in both the normal and the superconducting state in terms of correlation functions of the embedded cluster. We find that the shortest electron lifetime occurs near optimal doping where the superconducting critical temperature is maximal. A second critical doping connected to the change of topology of the Fermi surface is also identified. The mean-field theory provides a simple physical picture of three doping regimes, the underdoped, the overdoped, and the optimally doped regime, in terms of the physics of the quantum plaquette impurity model. We compare the plaquette dynamical mean-field theory results with earlier resonating valence bond mean-field theories, noting the improved description of the momentum space anisotropy of the normal state properties and the doping dependence of the coefficient of the linear temperature dependence of the superfluid density in the superconducting state.
The optical conductivity of the 2D t−J model and the origin of electron incoherence in the high-Tc cuprate superconductors: a variational study
Understanding the origin of electron incoherence is the first step toward a theoretical description of the non-Fermi liquid behavior of the high-Tc cuprate superconductors. Such electron incoherence manifests itself most evidently in the non-Drude behavior of the optical response of the system and the anomalous density fluctuation behavior in the long wave length limit. The spectral weight transfer related to such dissipative response, which is absent in conventional Fermi liquid metal, has direct consequence on the dc transport property of the system in the normal state and the superfluid stiffness in the superconducting state. It is found that such electron incoherence remains significant even in the clean limit and at low temperature and thus must be attributed to the strong electron correlation effect in the cuprate superconductors. Here we study such an intrinsic effect in the 2D t−J model through the variational calculation of its optical conductivity σ(ω). We assume a resonating valence bond ground state as our starting point and find that a significant portion of the total optical spectral weight remains incoherent throughout the phase diagram. The optical absorption is found to extend all the way to an energy of the order of the bare band width. We find that both the total optical weight Kˉ and the integrated incoherent optical weight I increase monotonically with doping, with their ratio Rincoh=I/Kˉ decreasing monotonically with doping. Our results indicate that the majority part of electron incoherence in the 2D t−J model can be attributed to the electron fractionalization mechanism assumed in such a treatment. We also find that the Drude weight deduced from D=Kˉ−I scales linearly with hole doping, without any sign of a non-monotonic behavior in the overdoped regime.
We investigate by means of Dynamical mean-field theory the crossover from BCS superconductivity to Bose-Einstein (BE) condensation of preformed pairs which occurs in the attractive Hubbard model by increasing the attraction strength. Fixing the density to a generic value n=0.75, we follow the evolution of the two energy scales underlying the superconducting phenomenon, the gap ${\ensuremath{\Delta}}_{0}$, and the superfluid stiffness DS, which controls the phase coherence. The BCS--BE crossover is clearly mirrored in a change in the hierarchy of these two scales, the smallest of the two controlling the critical temperature. In the whole intermediate-to-strong-coupling region Tc scales with DS, while TC is proportional to ${\ensuremath{\Delta}}_{0}$ only in the BCS regime. This evolution as a function of the interaction qualitatively resembles what happens in the cuprates when the doping is decreased towards the Mott insulator. This continuous change reflects also in the energetic balance at the superconducting transition. While, as it is well known, superconductivity is stabilized by a potential energy gain in the BCS regime, the strong-coupling superconductivity is made stable by a reduction of kinetic energy. Interestingly the intermediate-coupling region, where the maximum Tc is achieved, behaves similarly to the strong-coupling regime, and its gain in kinetic energy is the largest as a function of the coupling. Since the integral of the optical conductivity is proportional to the kinetic energy, the above finding implies that the attractive Hubbard model can account qualitatively for the anomalous behavior of optical spectra around Tc, where an increase of spectral weight is observed in under and optimally doped cuprates, while the overdoped samples have a more standard behavior. This qualitative agreement is lost in the normal phase, specifically at strong coupling, calling for the inclusion of strong correlation effects in the theoretical description.
We investigate the extended t-J model (which may include a small next-nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic coupling or a small hole-hole nearest-neighbor repulsion) by exact-diagonalization techniques. The calculation is done for one and two holes on a 4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4 torus with arbitrary twisted boundary conditions. The role of the boundary conditions on the ground-state energy, the band width, the charge stiffness, and the optical conductivity is extensively studied. In the two-dimensional space of the twist angles (to be viewed as fluxes through the holes of the torus) the ground-state energy surface exhibits multiple level crossings and may present, locally, a negative curvature (or stiffness) characteristic of a paramagnetic behavior. For two holes and sufficiently large J/t (J/t>0.7) the minima of the energy surface in the parameter space of the fluxes are separated by half a flux quantum. The optical conductivity is calculated by averaging over the boundary conditions in order to minimize finite-size effects and to converge more rapidly toward the thermodynamic limit. We find three different contributions to the optical conductivity; (i) a Drude peak at \ensuremath{\omega}=0, (ii) a broad absorption band in the range J2t, and (iii) a tail extending to larger frequencies (2t7t) associated to the diffusive character of the hole states at these energies.Typically, at low doping density (6%) for a wide range of J/t, and at intermediate doping (12%) for small J/t, these three components account for roughly 30%, 50%, and 20% of the total spectral weight, respectively. At small ratio J/t, both Drude weight and finite-frequency absorption scale almost proportionally with the doping density. However, with increasing J/t, the effective hole-hole attraction (for 12% doping) leads to a transfer of weight from finite frequency to zero frequency. In contrast to the quasiparticle mass, in the J/t\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0 limit, the optical mass defined through the weight of the Drude \ensuremath{\delta}-function peak does not increase like \ensuremath{\sim}t/J but, rather, approaches a limit around \ensuremath{\sim}5. We discuss our results in connection with the optical experiments in the high-Tc cuprates and suggest that the observed mid-infrared band is due to the strong coupling between the mobile holes and the spin excitations of the Mott insulator, as expected from a description in terms of the t-J Hamiltonian.
We calculate the optical conductivity \ensuremath{\sigma}(\ensuremath{\omega}) of the Hubbard and t-J models on 10- and 16-site lattices, respectively, using a Lanczos method. Results are presented for various values of the couplings U/t, J/t, and band fillings, using free- and periodic-boundary conditions. We discuss the behavior of the kinetic energy in the ground state, the distribution of spectral weight of \ensuremath{\sigma}(\ensuremath{\omega}) between low and high energies and the sum rule. Indications of a Drude-like peak at low energy in the one-hole subspace are observed in both models. Assuming that holes behave like independent (mass-renormalized) particles in the normal state of the superconductors, our results also suggest that the optical midinfrared broadband observed experimentally can be explained by hole excitations of strongly correlated systems.
The optical conductivity and Drude weight of a spin-fermion model for cuprates are studied as a function of electronic density and temperature using Monte Carlo techniques. This model develops stripes and robust D-wave pairing correlations upon hole doping, and it has the advantage that it can be numerically simulated without sign problems. Both static and dynamical information can be obtained. In this work, it was possible to analyze up to 12312 site clusters at low temperatures ranging between 0.01t and 0.1t ~between 50 K and 500 K for a hopping amplitude t;0.5 eV). As the temperature is reduced, spectral weight is transferred from high to low frequencies in agreement with the behavior observed experimentally. Varying the hole density, the Drude weight has a maximum at the optimal doping for the model, i.e., at the density where the pairing correlations are stronger. It was also observed that the inverse of the Drude weight, roughly proportional to the resistivity, decreases linearly with the temperature at optimal doping, and it is abruptly reduced when robust pairing correlations develop upon further reducing the temperature. The behavior and general form of the optical conductivity are found to be in good agreement with experimental results for the cuprates. Our results also establish the spin-fermion model for cuprates as a reasonable alternative to the t-J model, which is much more difficult to study accurately.