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arXiv:cond-mat/0602164 · Physical Review B

Phenomenological theory of the pseudogap state

Kaiyu Yang, Thomas Maurice Rice, Fu‐Chun Zhang

Published May 3, 2006• 359 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

An ansatz is proposed for the coherent part of the single particle Green's function in a doped resonant valence bond (RVB) state by analogy with the form derived by Konik and co-workers for a doped spin liquid formed by an array of two-leg Hubbard ladders near half-filling. The parameters of the RVB state are taken from the renormalized mean field theory of Zhang and co-workers for underdoped cuprates. The ansatz shows good agreement with recent angle resolved photoemission on underdoped cuprates and resolves an apparent disagreement with the Luttinger sum rule. The transition in the normal state from a doped RVB spin liquid to a standard Landau Fermi liquid, that occurs in the renormalized mean field theory, appears as a quantum critical point characterized by a change in the analytic form of the Green's function. A $d$-wave superconducting dome surrounding this quantum critical point is introduced phenomenologically. Results are also presented for the Drude weight and tunneling density of states as functions of the hole density.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.73.174501

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An ansatz is proposed for the coherent part of the single particle Green's function in a doped resonant valence bond (RVB) state by analogy with the form derived by Konik and co-workers for a doped spin liquid formed by an array of two-leg Hubbard ladders near half-filling. The parameters of the RVB state are taken from the renormalized mean field theory of Zhang and co-workers for underdoped cuprates. The ansatz shows good agreement with recent angle resolved photoemission on underdoped cuprates and resolves an apparent disagreement with the Luttinger sum rule. The transition in the normal state from a doped RVB spin liquid to a standard Landau Fermi liquid, that occurs in the renormalized mean field theory, appears as a quantum critical point characterized by a change in the analytic form of the Green's function. A ddd-wave superconducting dome surrounding this quantum critical point is introduced phenomenologically. Results are also presented for the Drude weight and tunneling density of states as functions of the hole density.
The Luttinger sum rule is usually considered for Landau Fermi liquids in which the single particle Green’s function G(k, 0) changes sign at the the Fermi surface by passing through infinity. However the general proof allows also for a sign change at which G has a zero. A recent analysis by Konik and coworkers considers a model of 2‐leg Hubbard ladders weakly coupled by a small long range interladder tunneling. At half‐filling a semimetallic state with small Fermi pockets is induced beyond a threshold tunneling strength. The sign changes in G(k, 0) relevent for the Luttinger sum rule now take place at surfaces with both zeros and infinities. The zero surfaces differ from the minimum gap surfaces. The latter are often used in ARPES experiments on underdoped cuprates to obtain an underlying Fermi surface but this procedure leads to problems with the Luttinger sum rule. Some speculations on how the Luttinger sum rule should be applied to the pseudogap phase of the underdoped cuprates are included.
This thesis is devoted to a theoretical study of high-temperature superconductivity from the viewpoint of a doped Mott insulator. To this end, the square-lattice t-J model is analyzed by variational and mean-field approaches. The thesis focuses on the construction of excitations and on spectral properties in the framework of Anderson's concept of resonating-valence-bond wavefunctions. The quantum dimer model as a toy model for the resonating-valence-bond phase of Mott insulators is also explored. In the first part of the thesis, the single-particle Green's functions in the superconducting phase are analyzed using Gutzwiller-projected variational wavefunctions for the t-J model. It is found that the overall spectral weight is reduced by a momentum-dependent renormalization, and that the projection produces a particle-hole asymmetry in the renormalization of the spectral weights. The second part analyzes the Green's functions in the pseudogap phase of the cuprates within an SU(2) mean-field approach where the order parameter fluctuates between the d-wave superconductor and the non-superconducting staggered-flux state. The model predicts a photoemission spectrum with an asymmetric gap structure interpolating between the superconducting gap centered at the Fermi energy and the asymmetric staggered-flux gap. This gap asymmetry changes sign at the "hot-spots" where the Fermi surface crosses the diagonal (0,π)-(π,0). In the last part of the thesis, single hole and vortex excitations in the liquid phase of the triangular-lattice Rokhsar-Kivelson quantum dimer model are considered. It is found that the motion of a hole bound to a topological excitation is strongly constrained due to interference effects.
We propose a class of ground states for doped Mott insulators in the electron second quantization representation. They are obtained from a bosonic resonating valence bond (RVB) theory of the $t\text{\penalty1000-\hskip0pt}J$ model. At half filling, the ground state describes spin correlations of the S=1∕2S=1∕2S=1∕2 Heisenberg model very accurately. Its spin degrees of freedom are characterized by RVB pairing of spins, the size of which decreases continuously as holes are doped into the system. Charge degrees of freedom emerge upon doping and are described by twisted holes in the RVB background. We show that the twisted holes exhibit an off diagonal long range order (ODLRO) in the pseudogap ground state, which has a finite pairing amplitude, but is short of phase coherence. Unpaired spins in such a pseudogap ground state behave as free vortices, preventing superconducting phase coherence. The existence of nodal quasiparticles is also ensured by such a hidden ODLRO in the ground state, which is non-Fermi liquidlike in the absence of superconducting phase coherence. Two distinct types of spin excitations can also be constructed. The superconducting instability of the pseudogap ground state is discussed and a ddd-wave superconducting ground state is obtained. This class of pseudogap and superconducting ground states unifies antiferromagnetism, pseudogap, superconductivity, and Mott physics into a new state of matter.
Using continuity, we derive a renormalized Hamiltonian from the parent $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model to describe the properties of underdoped cuprates. The theory is constrained to agree with the behavior at half filling, which is well described by the Arovas-Auerbach valence bond state in which bosonic spinons are paired into singlets. Spinon states evolve continuously into the doped region preserving their symmetry. We assume that moving holes rapidly destroy magnetic order, which leads to a gap in the spinon spectrum and strongly renormalizes the theory. The spin gap leads to two different types hopping terms for renormalized holes. In one, a fermionic holon hops within the same sublattice accompanied by a singlet backflow, giving rise to a non-Fermi-liquid normal state with novel properties. Spinon singlets condense below a pseudogap temperature ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}$ (<<< spin gap temperature T0{T}^{0}T0), which allows holons to propagate coherently, forming a spinless Fermi liquid, but without an observable holon Fermi surface. Above ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}$, holons are localized. This is the so-called strange metal phase, which is actually a new type of insulator since its resistivity would be infinite at T=0T=0T=0. In the second term a pair of holons belonging to opposite sublattices hop, accompanied by a singlet backflow. In the presence of the singlet condensate holon pairs condense, leading to ddd-wave superconductivity; the symmetry is primarily determined by the symmetry of the valence bond state at half filling. The metal and the superconductor preserve the two-sublattice character of the valence bond state. A careful examination of the nuclear magnetic resonance, tunneling, and transport data shows that the predictions of the theory is consistent with experimental results. Remarkably, the existence of the spin gap provides a natural explanation for the phenomenon of two dimensionality of the normal state in the presence of interplane hopping. The marked asymmetry between hole-doped and electron-doped cuprates is also easily explained.
Very soon after the discovery of the high-Tc cuprate superconductors Anderson proposed the key to understanding their highly unusual properties lay in the ansatz that they were hole doped spin liquids in which the spins are bound in singlet pairs resonating between different configurations. This RVB concept is generally formulated for a doped Mott insulator, i.e. for a system with a strong onsite Coulomb interaction. It is instructive to explore the approach from weak Coulomb interaction to see if similar behavior can also occur case. Quasi-one dimensional systems in the form of finite width ladders do indeed show such behavior with a continuous crossover from weak to strong interaction limits. In two dimensions functional renormalization group methods have recently been developed to treat weak to moderately strong interactions. These show that similar behavior can occur in the case that the Fermi energy lies near the logarithmically divergent van Hove singularity in the density of states when the band is nearly half-filled. These methods are limited to a description of the flow to strong coupling as the energy or temperature scale is lowered. The form of the strong coupling phase can be explored by numerical techniques. However a proper theory of this phase is lacking and even a consistent phenomenological description has not yet been achieved.
In recent years there has been significant work aimed at understanding what effect the variation of electronic doping has on material properties. In the high transition-temperature (high-Tc_cc​) cuprate superconductors hole doping has an impact on the superconducting transition temperature. In the underdoped regime, the cuprates exhibit anomalous properties due to a pseudogap which forms and is thought to be related to Mott insulating physics. While there is no general consensus as to the mechanism underlying high temperature superconductivity, the resonating valence bond (RVB) theory proposed by Anderson in 1987 with a Gutzwiller projected d-wave BCS wave function could give a first picture of the high-Tc_cc​ cuprates. We have calculated properties of the cuprates using the assumption that the pseudogap state acts as a normal state to an otherwise standard BCS mean field theory. We find that the phenomenological RVB spin liquid model proposed by Yang, Rice and Zhang (YRZ) is highly successful at describing the doping dependent features of the cuprates. Through application of the YRZ model and the tools of many-body theory we present results on anomalous properties observed in: electronic specific heat; Raman and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) data; effective mass renormalization; and thermal broadening seen in ARPES. We verify that the YRZ ansatz qualitatively describes these anomalies along with their doping dependent variations. We conclude from this work that the physics underlying the pseudogap, while distinct in origin from superconductivity, is likely to arise from an RVB wavefunction that is closely related to the BCS state. In graphene, variation in doping modifies the polarization function which describes a screened electron-electron interaction. This leads to additional features in the spectral function which are due to electron-plasmon coupling. In this work, we calculated the electronic density of states including this interaction along with its doping dependence with and without an electron-phonon interaction. We find clear features of electron-electron interactions in the density of states. These features are related to the energies of plasmaron bands in the spectral function and can be modified through doping so as to be distinct from the phonon energy scales.