Proximity to a Mott insulating phase is likely to be an important physical ingredient of a theory that aims to describe high-temperature superconductivity in the cuprates. Quantum cluster methods are well suited to describe the Mott phase. Hence, as a step toward a quantitative theory of the competition between antiferromagnetism and
d-wave superconductivity in the cuprates, we use cellular dynamical mean-field theory to compute zero-temperature properties of the two-dimensional square lattice Hubbard model. The
d-wave order parameter is found to scale like the superexchange coupling
J for on-site interaction
U comparable to or larger than the bandwidth. The order parameter also assumes a dome shape as a function of doping, while, by contrast, the gap in the single-particle density of states decreases monotonically with increasing doping. In the presence of a finite second neighbor hopping ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$, the zero-temperature phase diagram displays the electron-hole asymmetric competition between antiferromagnetism and superconductivity that is observed experimentally in the cuprates. Adding realistic third neighbor hopping ${t}^{\ensuremath{''}}$ improves the overall agreement with the experimental phase diagram. Since band parameters can vary depending on the specific cuprate considered, the sensitivity of the theoretical phase diagram to band parameters challenges the commonly held assumption that the doping vs
Tc∕Tcmax phase diagram of the cuprates is universal. The calculated angle-resolved photoemission spectrum displays the observed electron-hole asymmetry. The tendency to homogeneous coexistence of the superconducting and antiferromagnetic order parameters is stronger than observed in most experiments but consistent with many theoretical results and with experiments in some layered high-temperature superconductors. Clearly, our calculations reproduce important features of
d-wave superconductivity in the cuprates that would otherwise be considered anomalous from the point of view of the standard Bardeen--Cooper--Schrieffer approach. At strong coupling,
d-wave superconductivity and antiferromagnetism naturally appear as two equally important competing instabilities of the normal phase of the same underlying Hamiltonian.
We study the normal-state, doping-driven phase diagram of the square-lattice Hubbard model using the dynamical cluster approximation combined with the numerical renormalization group as a cluster solver, which gives direct access to real-frequency dynamics at essentially zero temperature. In a parameter regime relevant for cuprates,
U=7t and
t′=−0.3t, we find a critical doping
p∗ that marks a continuous quantum phase transition between a pseudogap metal and a normal Fermi liquid. The transition is identified by a continuous collapse, from both sides, of the Fermi-liquid scale extracted from charge, spin, and
dx2−y2-wave pairing susceptibilities. This collapse produces a non-Fermi-liquid regime at intermediate energy scales, which appears to extend to arbitrarily low scales at
p∗. As
p∗ is crossed from the normal Fermi liquid at
p>p∗ into the pseudogap metal at $p
Many strongly correlated systems exhibit strange metallic behavior in certain parameter regimes characterized by anomalous transport properties that are irreconcilable with a Fermi-liquid-like description in terms of quasiparticles. The Hubbard model is a standard theoretical starting point to examine the properties of such systems and also exhibits non-Fermi-liquid behavior in simulations. Here we analytically study the two-dimensional hole-doped Hubbard model in the large
U limit, first identifying a doping-induced percolation transition in the low-energy sector occurring at a definite critical doping
pc depending on lattice structure. Using the critical properties near this transition we rewrite the Hubbard Hamiltonian and motivate a low-energy lattice-independent large-
N model with distinct non-Fermi-liquid properties. We show that this model has linear-in-
T resistivity with doping-dependent slope maximized at
p=pc and power-law optical conductivity ${\ensuremath{\sim}|\ensuremath{\omega}|}^{\ensuremath{-}2/3}$. Though the parameters used in developing this theory mean it cannot be directly applied to the cuprate superconductors, we nevertheless reproduce several important phenomena observed in their strange metal phase and also predict these same qualitative behaviors to manifest in other lattices near concrete hole dopings.
The recently proposed center-focused post-processing procedure [Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 033476 (2020)] of cellular dynamical mean-field theory suggests that central sites of large impurity clusters are closer to the exact solution of the Hubbard model than the edge sites. In this paper, we systematically investigate results in the spirit of this center-focused scheme for several cluster sizes up to 8×8 in and out of particle-hole symmetry. First we analyze the metal-insulator crossovers and transitions of the half-filled Hubbard model on a simple square lattice. We find that the critical interaction of the crossover is reduced with increasing cluster sizes and the critical temperature abruptly drops for the 4×4 cluster. Second, for this cluster size, we apply the center-focused scheme to a system with more realistic tight-binding parameters, investigating its pseudogap regime as a function of temperature and doping, where we find doping dependent metal-insulator crossovers, Lifshitz transitions and a strongly renormalized Fermi-liquid regime. Additionally to diagnosing the real space origin of the suppressed antinodal spectral weight in the pseudogap regime, we can infer hints towards underlying charge ordering tendencies.
We investigate the properties of the frustrated underdoped Hubbard model on the square lattice using two complementary approaches, i.e., the dynamical cluster extension of the dynamical mean-field theory and the variational Monte Carlo simulations of Gutzwiller-Jastrow wave functions with backflow corrections. We compare and discuss data for the energy and the double occupancies, as obtained from both approaches. At small dopings, we observe a rapid crossover from a weakly correlated metal at low interaction strength
U to a non-Fermi-liquid correlated state with strong local spin correlations. Furthermore, we investigate the stability of the correlated state against phase separation. We observe phase separation only for large values of
U or very large frustration. No phase separation is present for the parameter range relevant for the cuprates.
Metal-insulator transitions in the paramagnetic phase of the two-dimensional square-lattice Hubbard model are studied using the dynamical cluster approximation with eight momentum cells. We show that both the interaction-driven and the doping-driven transitions are multistage and momentum-sector specific with Fermi-liquid metal and fully gapped insulator phases separated by an intermediate phase, in which some regions of the Brillouin zone are gapped while others sustain gapless quasiparticles. We argue that this is the coarse-grained version of a gradually shrinking arc or pocket. A pronounced particle-hole asymmetry is found.