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arXiv:cond-mat/9506065 · Physical Review Letters

Theory of Underdoped Cuprates

Xiao-Gang Wen, Patrick A. Lee

Published Jan 15, 1996• 537 citations
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Abstract

We develop a slave-boson theory for the $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model at finite doping which respects an $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ symmetry---a symmetry previously known to be important at half filling. The mean field phase diagram is found to be consistent with the phases observed in the cuprate superconductors, which contain $d$-wave superconductor, spin gap, strange metal, and Fermi liquid phases. The spin gap phase is best understood as the staggered flux phase, which is nevertheless translationally invariant for physical quantities. The electron spectral function shows small Fermi pockets at low doping which continuously evolve into the large Fermi surface at high doping concentrations.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.76.503

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P. A. Marchetti, Zhao-Bin Su, Lu Yu

The U(1)×SU(2) Chern–Simons gauge theory is applied to study the 2D t–J model describing the normal state of underdoped cuprate superconductors. The U(1) field produces a flux phase for holons converting them into Dirac-like fermions, while the SU(2) field, due to the coupling to holons gives rise to a gap for spinons. An effective low-energy action involving holons, spinons and a self-generated U(1) gauge field is derived. The Fermi surface and electron spectral function obtained are consistent with photoemission experiments. The theory predicts a minimal gap proportional to doping concentration. It also explains anomalous transport properties.

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We develop a slave-boson theory for the t\ensuremath−Jt\ensuremath{-}Jt\ensuremath−J model at finite doping which respects an SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2)SU(2) symmetry---a symmetry previously known to be important at half filling. The mean field phase diagram is found to be consistent with the phases observed in the cuprate superconductors, which contain ddd-wave superconductor, spin gap, strange metal, and Fermi liquid phases. The spin gap phase is best understood as the staggered flux phase, which is nevertheless translationally invariant for physical quantities. The electron spectral function shows small Fermi pockets at low doping which continuously evolve into the large Fermi surface at high doping concentrations.
We develop a slave-boson theory for the $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model at finite doping that respects an SU(2) symmetry: a symmetry previously known to be important at half filling. The mean-field phase diagram is found to be consistent with the phases observed in the cuprate superconductors, which contain ddd-wave superconductor, spin-gap, strange metal, and Fermi-liquid phases. The spin-gap phase is best understood as the staggered flux phase, which is nevertheless translationally invariant for physical quantities. The physical electron spectral function shows small Fermi segments at low doping that continuously evolve into the large Fermi surface at high-doping concentrations. The close relation between the SU(2) and the U(1) slave-boson theory is discussed. The low-energy effective theory for the low-lying fluctuations is derived and additional lying modes [which were overlooked in the U(1) theory] are identified.
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.
The Chern-Simons bosonization with $\mathrm{U}(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\mathrm{SU}(2)$ gauge field is applied to the two-dimensional $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model in the limit $t\ensuremath{\gg}J,$ to study the normal-state properties of underdoped cuprate superconductors. We prove the existence of an upper bound on the partition function for holons in a spinon background, and we find the optimal spinon configuration saturating the upper bound on average---a coexisting flux phase and s+ids+ids+id-like resonating-valence-bond state. After neglecting the feedback of holon fluctuations on the U(1) field B and spinon fluctuations on the SU(2) field VVV, the holon field is a fermion and the spinon field is a hard-core boson. Within this approximation we show that the B field produces a \ensuremath{\pi} flux phase for the holons, converting them into Dirac-like fermions, while the VVV field, taking into account the feedback of holons produces a gap for the spinons vanishing in the zero-doping limit. The nonlinear-\ensuremath{\sigma} model with a mass term describes the crossover from the short-ranged antiferromagnetic (AF) state in doped samples to long-range AF order in reference compounds. Moreover, we derive a low-energy effective action in terms of spinons, holons and a self-generated U(1) gauge field. Neglecting the gauge fluctuations, the holons are described by the Fermi-liquid theory with a Fermi surface consisting of four ``half-pockets'' centered at (\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ensuremath{\pi}/2,\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ensuremath{\pi}/2) and one reproduces the results for the electron spectral function obtained in the mean-field approximation, in agreement with the photoemission data on underdoped cuprates. The gauge fluctuations are not confining due to coupling to holons, but nevertheless yield an attractive interaction between spinons and holons leading to a bound state with electron quantum numbers. The renormalization effects due to gauge fluctuations give rise to non-Fermi-liquid behavior for the composite electron, in certain temperature range showing the linear in T resistivity. This formalism provides a new interpretation of the spin gap in the underdoped superconductors (mainly due to the short-ranged AF order) and predicts that the minimal gap for the physical electron is proportional to the square root of the doping concentration. Therefore the gap does not vanish in any direction. All these predictions can be checked explicitly in experiment.
We present a theory for the lightly doped $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model that is of possible relevance for the normal state of underdoped cuprates. Starting from an arbitrary dimer covering of the plane, an exact representation of the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ Hamiltonian in terms of bond bosons and fermions can be derived. Since all dimer coverings must give identical results for observable quantities, we construct an approximate but translationally invariant Hamiltonian by averaging the bond particle Hamiltonian over all possible dimer coverings. Treating the resulting Hamiltonian in the mean-field approximation, we find Fermi pockets centered near $(\ensuremath{\pi}/2,\ensuremath{\pi}/2)$ with a total area of x/2x/2x/2 (with xxx the hole concentration) and a gapped spin-wave-like band of triplet excitations.
The U(1) slave-boson mean-field theory of the t - J model has been used by many authors as a starting point for the theoretical analysis of high - Tc cuprate superconductors. With suitable refinements, the theory can explain a lot of qualitative features of cuprates. However, the theory does not produce a correct description of the low-energy quasi-particle properties in the under-doped regime. There exist several possible schemes to resolve this difficulty, among them, one generalizes the U(1) theory to SU(2) formulation and the other introduces confinement between spinons and holons. In this thesis, we generalize the Landau transport equations of the U(1) slave-boson mean-field theory of the t - J model to the SU(2) formulation. We first generalize the SU(2) slave-boson mean-field theory to the time-dependent regime. After eliminating the boson and constraint fields exactly in the linear-response regime at zero-temperature, we obtain a set of transport equations for quasi-particles, which has a similar structure as the Landau transport equations for Fermi-liquid superconductors, with all the Landau parameters explicitly given except that besides the usual effective interaction in the particle-hole channel in Fermi-liquid theory, we find an effective interaction in the particle-particle channel, which reflects the SU(2) symmetry between particles and holes. The transport equation is SU(2) invariant at half-filling. Around q⃗ = 0, the electron density couples only to the transverse part of the external field and the quasi-particle charge is still of order x. Besides the SU(2) formulation approach, we also investigate spinon-holon confinement in the U(1) slave-boson theory. The optical and thermal conduc-tivities of U (1) slave-boson theory with confinement are calculated. For optical conductivity, we consider only the contributions from static impurities. The qualitative behavior of our results agrees with experimental results. However, to explain the experiments quantitatively, we need to study further the con-tributions from phonons. We found a phenomenological effective Hamiltonian for the quasi-particle Green's functions in the U(1) slave-boson theory with spinon-hoion confinement. Starting from this effective Hamiltonian, we exam-ine the thermal conductivity within the theory. In particular, we compare the thermal conductivity for four different situations: (i) the ordinary d-wave su-perconducting state with four Dirac Fermi points; (ii) the normal metal state with a half-pocket Fermi surface; (iii) the spinon-holon confinement supercon-ducting state with a half-pocket Fermi surface; (iv) BCS superconducting state with a half-pocket Fermi surface.
The U(1)×SU(2) Chern–Simons gauge theory is applied to study the 2D t–J model describing the normal state of underdoped cuprate superconductors. The U(1) field produces a flux phase for holons converting them into Dirac-like fermions, while the SU(2) field, due to the coupling to holons gives rise to a gap for spinons. An effective low-energy action involving holons, spinons and a self-generated U(1) gauge field is derived. The Fermi surface and electron spectral function obtained are consistent with photoemission experiments. The theory predicts a minimal gap proportional to doping concentration. It also explains anomalous transport properties.