We show that doping-induced charge fluctuations in strongly correlated Hubbard electron systems near the 1/2-filled, insulating limit cause overscreening of the electron-electron Coulomb repulsion. The resulting attractive screened interaction potential supports d_{x^2-y^2}-pairing with a strongly peaked, doping dependent pairing strength at lower doping, followed by s-wave pairing at larger doping levels.
We show that doping-induced charge fluctuations in strongly correlated Hubbard electron systems near the 1/2-filled, insulating limit cause overscreening of the electron-electron Coulomb repulsion. The resulting attractive screened interaction potential supports d_{x^2-y^2}-pairing with a strongly peaked, doping dependent pairing strength at lower doping, followed by s-wave pairing at larger doping levels.
By combining fermion Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations with diagrammatic theory, we have calculated the dielectric screening and the screened potential, in a quasi 2D Hubbard model for cuprate superconductors with and without 1/r Coulomb potential. At half filling, we find that the Hubbard electrons contribute only a minor fraction, Delta(epsilon) ~0.9 of the observed in-plane dielectric constant of the cuprates, epsilon ~4.7. With increasing doping x, the 1/r interaction is rapidly suppressed by metallic screening. Surprisingly, near x ~5%, the low-frequency part of the screened potential V_S becomes attractive, at distances r \ge 1. At r=1, it reaches maximum attraction strength for dopings x ~13-15% and becomes repulsive again for for x ~23-25%. Similar results are found for the pure 2D Hubbard model. The 1/r interaction enhances the on-site and 1st neighbor overscreening attraction already present in the pure model at finite doping. Our results are potentially relevant for the d-wave pairing mechanism in the cuprates, suggesting that the screened 1/r potential could actually increase the d-wave attraction, in the 5-25% doping regime. They may also have implications for the isotope effect and its doping dependence. At larger dopings, x>15%, the screened potential becomes attractive even on-site, suggesting that it could support or enhance s-wave pairing. We also give a rigorous analytical proof that the screened on-site interaction must become attractive near half-filling in the repulsive large-U-limit, with and without 1/r interaction. We present a simple physical interpretation of this result in terms of retardation effects. We also point out that on-site overscreening implies singularities in the imaginary frequency dependence of the irreducible polarization insertion and its 3-point vertex function.
The renormalization of the electron-phonon interaction by strong electronic correlations is studied using a one-band Hubbard model with infinite repulsion and nearest (t model) and nearest and second-nearest (tt\ensuremath{'} model) neighbor hopping terms and an on-site electron-phonon coupling. Using Hubbard's X operators and an extension from 2 to N degrees of freedom for the electrons the leading contributions for the electron self-energy and the vertex function in 1/N and the electron-phonon coupling constant are given and numerically evaluated for a square lattice. We find that the momentum dependence of the vertex function depends strongly on doping: For large dopings it is rather weak, with decreasing doping it becomes more and more pronounced leading to a strong reduction of the vertex at larger momentum transfers until, for very small dopings, the vertex essentially consists of a forward scattering peak with a width proportional to the doping. This behavior occurs both in the t and the tt\ensuremath{'} models and also in one dimension where analytic expressions are derived. Correlation effects also change ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}^{2}$F in general: The full-symmetric component ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}^{2}$F1 is in the t model somewhat, in the tt\ensuremath{'} model rather strongly suppressed, especially near half-filling; the other symmetry components ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}^{2}$Fi with i=2,...,5 increase strongly with decreasing doping and are of similar magnitude as ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}^{2}$F1 near half-filling.Including also direct Coulomb repulsion nontrivial symmetries such as d wave become more stable than the s-wave order parameter below a critical value for the doping even for the considered phonon-mediated superconductivity. Most dramatic, however, is the quenching of the resistivity due to electron-phonon scattering both in the t and the tt\ensuremath{'} models at intermediate and small dopings. This result may explain the absence of phonon features in the experimental transport coefficients of high-Tc compounds. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
We show numerically that the nature of the doping-induced metal-insulator transition in the two-dimensional Hubbard model with hopping matrix element t and Coulomb repulsion U is radically altered by the inclusion of a term W that depends upon a square of a single-particle nearest-neighbor hopping. This result is reached by computing the localization length ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{l}$ in the insulating state. At W/t=0.05 and U/t=4, we find results consistent with ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{l}\ensuremath{\sim}|\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\mu}}_{c}{|}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}$ where ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{c}$ is the critical chemical potential. In contrast, ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{l}\ensuremath{\sim}|\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\mu}}_{c}{|}^{\ensuremath{-}1/4}$ for the Hubbard model at U/t=4. At half-filling, we calculate the density of states $N(\ensuremath{\omega})$. The large value of $N(\ensuremath{\omega})$ in the vicinity of $\ensuremath{\omega}={\ensuremath{\mu}}_{c}$ present at W=0 is suppressed with growing values of W. At finite doping, the d-wave pair-field correlations are enhanced with growing values of W. The numerical results imply that at finite values of W doping the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator leads to a ${d}_{{x}^{2}\ensuremath{-}{y}^{2}}$ superconductor.
Using the variational Monte Carlo method, we find that a relatively weak long-range electron-phonon interaction induces a d-wave superconducting state in doped Mott-Hubbard insulators and/or strongly correlated metals with a condensation energy significantly larger than can be obtained with Coulomb repulsion only. Moreover, the superconductivity is shown to exist for infinite on-site Coulomb repulsion without the need for additional mechanisms such as spin fluctuations to mediate d-wave superconductivity. We argue that our superconducting state is robust with respect to a more intricate choice of the trial-wave function and that a possible origin of high-temperature superconductivity lies in a proper combination of strong electron-electron correlations with poorly screened Fr\"ohlich electron-phonon interaction.
We compute the two-particle quantities relevant for superconducting correlations in the two-dimensional Hubbard model within the dynamical cluster approximation. In the normal state we identify the parameter regime in density, interaction, and second-nearest-neighbor hopping strength that maximizes the d_{x^{2}-y^{2}} superconducting transition temperature. We find in all cases that the optimal transition temperature occurs at intermediate coupling strength, and is suppressed at strong and weak interaction strengths. Similarly, superconducting fluctuations are strongest at intermediate doping and suppressed towards large doping and half filling. We find a change in sign of the vertex contributions to d_{xy} superconductivity from repulsive near half filling to attractive at large doping. p-wave superconductivity is not found at the parameters we study, and s-wave contributions are always repulsive. For negative second-nearest-neighbor hopping the optimal transition temperature shifts towards the electron-doped side in opposition to the van Hove singularity, which moves towards hole doping. We surmise that an increase of the local interaction of the electron-doped compounds would increase T_{c}.
We model a Superconducting Single-Electron Transistor operating by repulsive interactions. The device consists of a ring of Hubbard clusters, placed between electrodes and capacitively coupled to a gate potential. In each cluster, a pair of electrons at appropriate filling feels a weak effective interaction which leads to pairing in part of the parameter space. Thus, the system can host many bound pairs, with correlation induced binding. When the charging energy exceeds the pairing energy, single-electron tunneling prevails; in the opposite regime, we predict the Coulomb blockade pattern of two-electron tunneling. This suggests that in tunneling experiments repulsion-induced pairs may behave in a similar way as phonon-induced ones.