We prove that the Mott insulating state is characterized by a divergence of the electron self-energy at well-defined values of momenta in the first Brillouin zone. When particle-hole symmetry is present, the divergence obtains at the momenta of the Fermi surface for the corresponding noninteracting system. Such a divergence gives rise to a surface of zeros (the Luttinger surface) of the single-particle Green function and offers a single unifying principle of Mottness from which pseudogap phenomena, spectral weight transfer, and broad spectral features emerge in doped Mott insulators. We also show that only when particle-hole symmetry is present does the volume of the zero surface equal the particle density. We identify that the general breakdown of Luttinger's theorem in a Mott insulator arises from the breakdown of a perturbative expansion for the self-energy in the single-particle Green function around the noninteracting limit. A modified version of Luttinger's theorem is derived for special cases.
We prove that the Mott insulating state is characterized by a divergence of the electron self-energy at well-defined values of momenta in the first Brillouin zone. When particle-hole symmetry is present, the divergence obtains at the momenta of the Fermi surface for the corresponding noninteracting system. Such a divergence gives rise to a surface of zeros (the Luttinger surface) of the single-particle Green function and offers a single unifying principle of Mottness from which pseudogap phenomena, spectral weight transfer, and broad spectral features emerge in doped Mott insulators. We also show that only when particle-hole symmetry is present does the volume of the zero surface equal the particle density. We identify that the general breakdown of Luttinger's theorem in a Mott insulator arises from the breakdown of a perturbative expansion for the self-energy in the single-particle Green function around the noninteracting limit. A modified version of Luttinger's theorem is derived for special cases.
We review several of the normal state properties of the cuprates in an attempt to establish an organizing principle from which pseudogap phenomena, broad spectral features, T−linear resistivity, and spectral weight transfer emerge. We first show that standard field theories with a single critical length scale cannot capture the T−linear resistivity as long as the charge carriers are critical. What seems to be missing is an additional length scale, which may or may not be critical. Second, we prove a generalised version of Luttinger's theorem for a Mott insulator. Namely, regardless of the spatial dimension, the Fermi surface of the non-interacting system is converted into a surface of zeros of the single-particle Green function when the Mott insulator posesses particle-hole symmetry. Only in the presence of particle-hole symmetry does the volume of the surface of zeros equal the particle density. The surface of zeros persists at finite doping and is shown to provide a framework from which pseudogaps, broad spectral features, spectral weight transfer on the Mott gap scale can be understood.
Though most fermionic Mott insulators order at low temperatures, ordering is ancillary to their insulating behavior. Our emphasis here is on disentangling ordering from the intrinsic strongly correlated physics of a doped half-filled band. To this end, we focus on the two-dimensional Hubbard model. Because the charge gap arises from on-site correlations, we have been refining the nonperturbative approach of Matsumoto and Mancini [Phys. Rev. B 55, 2095 (1997)] which incorporates local physics. Crucial to this method is a self-consistent two-site dynamical cluster expansion which builds in the nearest-neighbor energy scale J. At half-filling, we find that the spectral function possesses a gap of order U and is devoid of any coherent quasiparticle peaks although ordering or charge fractionalization are absent. At low temperatures, local antiferromagnetic correlations emerge. In the doped case, we find that the Fermi surface exceeds the Luttinger volume. The breakdown of Luttinger's theorem in the underdoped regime is traced both to the dynamically generated Mott gap as well to a nonvanishing of the imaginary part of the self-energy at the Fermi level. Spectral weight transfer across the Mott gap also emerges as a ubiquitous feature of a doped Mott insulator and suggests that high- and low-energy scales are inseparable. Additionally in the underdoped regime, we find that a pseudogap exists in the single-particle density of states as well as in the heat capacity. The pseudogap (which is set by the energy scale t2/U) is argued to be a ubiquitous feature of a lightly doped Mott state and simply represents the fact that hole transport involves double occupancy. In analogy with the Mott gap and antiferromagnetism, we propose that ordering may also accompany the formation of a pseudogap. We suggest a current pattern within a one-band model that preserves translational but breaks time-reversal symmetry along the canonical x and y axes but not along $x=\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}y$ that is consistent with the experimental observations. Finally, we show that the Hall coefficient in a doped Mott insulator must change sign at a doping level x<1/3. The sign change is tied to a termination of strong correlation physics in the doped Mott state.
Breakdown of Landau's hypothesis of adiabatic continuation from noninteracting to fully interacting electrons is commonly believed to bring about a violation of Luttinger's theorem. Here, we elucidate what may go wrong in the proof of Luttinger's theorem. The analysis provides a simple way to correct Luttinger's expression of the electron number in single-band models where perturbation theory breaks down through the birth of a Luttinger surface without symmetry breaking. In those cases, we find that the Fermi volume only accounts for the doping away from half-filling. In the hypothetical circumstance of a non-symmetry-breaking Mott insulator with a Luttinger surface, our analysis predicts the noteworthy existence of quasiparticles whose Fermi surface is just the Luttinger one. Therefore, those quasiparticles can be legitimately regarded as spinons, and the Mott insulator with a Luttinger surface as realization of a spin-liquid insulator.
Based solely on the analytical properties of the single-particle Green's function of fermions at finite temperatures, we show that the generalized Luttinger theorem inherently possesses topological aspects. The topological interpretation of the generalized Luttinger theorem can be introduced because (i) the Luttinger volume is represented as the winding number of the single-particle Green's function and, thus, (ii) the deviation of the theorem, expressed with a ratio between the interacting and noninteracting single-particle Green's functions, is also represented as the winding number of this ratio. The formulation based on the winding number naturally leads to two types of the generalized Luttinger theorem. Exploring two examples of single-band translationally invariant interacting electrons, i.e., simple metal and Mott insulator, we show that the first type falls into the original statement for Fermi liquids given by Luttinger, where poles of the single-particle Green's function appear at the chemical potential, while the second type corresponds to the extended one for nonmetallic cases with no Fermi surface such as insulators and superconductors generalized by Dzyaloshinskii, where zeros of the single-particle Green's function appear at the chemical potential. This formulation also allows us to derive a sufficient condition for the validity of the Luttinger theorem of the first type by applying the Rouche's theorem in complex analysis as an inequality. Moreover, we can rigorously prove in a nonperturbative manner, without assuming any detail of a microscopic Hamiltonian, that the generalized Luttinger theorem of both types is valid for generic interacting fermions as long as the particle-hole symmetry is preserved. Finally, we show that the winding number of the single-particle Green's function can also be associated with the distribution function of quasiparticles, and therefore the number of quasiparticles is equal to the Luttinger volume. This implies that the fundamental hypothesis of the Landau's Fermi-liquid theory, the number of fermions being equal to that of quasiparticles, is guaranteed if the Luttinger theorem is valid since the theorem states that the number of fermions is equal to the Luttinger volume. All these general statements are made possible because of the finding that the Luttinger volume is expressed as the winding number of the single-particle Green's function at finite temperatures, for which the complex analysis can be readily exploited.
Using the density matrix renormalization group method, we systematically investigate the evolution of the Luttinger integral in the one-dimensional generalized t-V model as a function of filling and interaction strength, and identify three representative phases. In the weak-coupling regime, the zero-frequency Green's function exhibits a branch-cut structure at the Fermi momentum, and the Luttinger integral accurately reflects the particle density, indicating that the Luttinger theorem holds. As the interaction increases, the spectral weight near the Fermi momentum is gradually suppressed. Interestingly, in the strong coupling regime near half-filling, this singularity is progressively destroyed, accompanied by the emergence of momentum-space zeros in the real part of the Green's function, leading to a novel non-Fermi liquid metallic phase beyond the classic Luttinger liquid paradigm, where the Luttinger surface is no longer defined by a single singularity. While finite spectral weight remains at the original Fermi momentum, the singularity gradually diminishes. Meanwhile, zeros with negligible spectral weight appear away from this momentum, significantly affecting the integral. At exact half-filling, a single-particle gap opens, and the Green's function becomes nearly vanishing across the entire momentum space, indicating the complete suppression of low-energy electronic states consistent with the nature of an insulating charge-density-wave phase. These results suggest that the breakdown of the Luttinger theorem is not triggered by a single mechanism, but rather results from the interplay between interaction-driven evolution of excitation modes and the breaking of particle-hole symmetry, ultimately leading to a continuous reconstruction of the generalized Fermi surface from topologically protected to correlation-driven.
The long search for insulating materials that possess low-energy quasiparticles carrying electron's quantum numbers except charge-inspired by the neutral spin-1/2 excitations, the so-called spinons, exhibited by Anderson's resonating-valence-bond state-seems to have reached a turning point after the discovery of several Mott insulators displaying the same thermal and magnetic properties as metals, including quantum oscillations in a magnetic field. Here, we show that such anomalous behavior is not inconsistent with Landau's Fermi liquid theory of quasiparticles at a Luttinger surface. That is the manifold of zeros within the Brillouin zone of the single-particle Green's function at zero frequency, and which thus defines the spinon Fermi surface conjectured by Anderson.