Conventional Hartree-Fock mean field theory is used, for the first time, to investigate the full two-dimensional t-J model. To date, all other nontrivial mean field approaches modify the Hamiltonian or violate the double occupancy constraint. Unlike conventional mean field theory, these methods do not give variational results for the t-J model. The mean field phase diagram of the t-J model predicts enhanced superconductivity at the crossover between an insulating phase at low doping and a metallic phase at moderate doping. This behavior is remarkably similar to that of high temperature superconductors, for which the model is expected to provide a good description. In the mean field approximation, the t-J model is described by self-interacting spinless fermions hopping on a background lattice with spiral antiferromagnetic order. The interaction is attractive and high temperature superconductivity arises from the narrow bandwidth at the insulator to metal crossover.
Conventional Hartree-Fock mean field theory is used, for the first time, to investigate the full two-dimensional t-J model. To date, all other nontrivial mean field approaches modify the Hamiltonian or violate the double occupancy constraint. Unlike conventional mean field theory, these methods do not give variational results for the t-J model. The mean field phase diagram of the t-J model predicts enhanced superconductivity at the crossover between an insulating phase at low doping and a metallic phase at moderate doping. This behavior is remarkably similar to that of high temperature superconductors, for which the model is expected to provide a good description. In the mean field approximation, the t-J model is described by self-interacting spinless fermions hopping on a background lattice with spiral antiferromagnetic order. The interaction is attractive and high temperature superconductivity arises from the narrow bandwidth at the insulator to metal crossover.
For doped two-dimensional Mott insulators in their normal state, the challenge is to understand the evolution from a conventional metal at high doping to a strongly correlated metal near the Mott insulator at zero doping. To this end, we solve the cellular dynamical mean-field equations for the two-dimensional Hubbard model using a plaquette as the reference quantum impurity model and continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method as impurity solver. The normal-state phase diagram as a function of interaction strength U, temperature T, and filling n shows that, upon increasing n toward the Mott insulator, there is a surface of first-order transition between two metals at nonzero doping. That surface ends at a finite temperature critical line originating at the half-filled Mott critical point. Associated with this transition, there is a maximum in scattering rate as well as thermodynamic signatures. These findings suggest a new scenario for the normal-state phase diagram of the high temperature superconductors. The criticality surmised in these systems can originate not from a T = 0 quantum critical point, nor from the proximity of a long-range ordered phase, but from a low temperature transition between two types of metals at finite doping. The influence of Mott physics therefore extends well beyond half-filling.
High-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides (cuprates, e.g. La2−xSrxCuO4, YBa2Cu3O6+δ or Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ) remains among the most spectacular phenomena in condensed matter physics. Since its discovery in 1986, an enormous number (∼ 105) of papers on the subject have appeared. So far, there is no single, commonly accepted theory of high-temperature superconductivity. However, it is widely believed that a basic description of this phenomenon can be provided by a single-band Hubbard model or its derivative, the t-J model. The latter model is regarded as a minimal microscopic model, capable of describing the essential aspects of the complex physics of the cuprates. Unfortunately, in general case, neither of those two models can be solved exactly and therefore various approximate methods are used. Among them, the so-called mean-field methods provide a simple, yet fairly reasonable description of the cuprates. In particular, some of the main qualitative features of the phase diagram and the essential features of electronic spectrum are roughly reproduced. A standard mean-field approach to the t-J model, known under the name of renormalized mean-field theory (RMFT) goes beyond the Hartree-Fock approximation. Consequently, its fully consistent treatment requires a novel theoretical approach. This has been our original motivation to develop a general approach to the mean-field models, which is based on the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) principle. The method is presented in detail in Part II of this Thesis, and in Part III it is applied to study RMFT of the t-J model. First, we compare the results obtained within our formalism with those of the frequently used non-variational approach based entirely on the self-consistent equations. Also, various versions of RMFT are compared, and the most satisfactory of them is selected. This optimal version is subsequently used to study different versions of the original t-J Hamiltonian. As a result, upper critical concentration and doping dependence of the selected physical quantities (e.g. the superconducting gap and the Fermi velocity) is determined at low temperatures and in the absence of external magnetic field. We compare our findings both with theoretical results obtained from the Variational Monte Carlo (VMC) methods, as well as with the experimental data for selected cuprates. We show that the version of RMFT approach formulated in this Thesis provides a reasonable qualitative and in some cases semiquantitative rationalization of the principal characteristics of the hole-doped high-temperature superconductors at the optimal doping and in the overdoped regime. Possible extensions of the proposed analysis are mentioned at the end.
We have studied the two-dimensional Hubbard model on a square lattice with nearest-neighbor hopping. We first discuss the properties of the model within the mean-field approximation: Because of the form of the band structure, some peculiar features are found. We then discuss the simulation algorithm used and compare simulation results with exact results for 6-site chains to test the reliability of the approach. We present results for thermodynamic properties and correlation functions for lattices up to 8\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}8 in spatial size. The system is found to be an antiferromagnetic insulator for all values of the coupling constant at zero temperature in the half-filled-band case, but the long-range order is much smaller than predicted by mean-field theory. We perform a finite-size-scaling analysis to determine the character of the transition at zero coupling. For non-half-filled-band cases, our results suggest that the system is always paramagnetic, in contradiction with Hartree-Fock predictions. The system does not show tendency to ferromagnetism nor triplet superconductivity in the parameter range studied. We also discuss some properties of the attractive Hubbard model in the half-filled-band case.
Superconductivity in the cuprates exhibits many unusual features. We study the two-dimensional Hubbard model with plaquette dynamical mean-field theory to address these unusual features and relate them to other normal-state phenomena, such as the pseudogap. Previous studies with this method found that upon doping the Mott insulator at low temperature a pseudogap phase appears. The low-temperature transition between that phase and the correlated metal at higher doping is first-order. A series of crossovers emerge along the Widom line extension of that first-order transition in the supercritical region. Here we show that the highly asymmetric dome of the dynamical mean-field superconducting transition temperature Tc(d), the maximum of the condensation energy as a function of doping, the correlation between maximum Tc(D) and normal-state scattering rate, the change from potential-energy driven to kinetic-energy driven pairing mechanisms can all be understood as remnants of the normal state first-order transition and its associated crossovers that also act as an organizing principle for the superconducting state.
The ground state of two-dimensional t – J model including superconductivity and antiferromagnetism is studied using a new type of analytic estimation of the effect of strong correlation. The method is an extension of the Gutzwiller approximation which gives renormalization of parameters, t and J , due to the Gutzwiller projection operator excluding double occupancies. It is shown that the essential point of the renormalization is its dependence on the expectation values of superconductivity and antiferromagnetic moment. In special the renormalization factor is anisotropic in spin space, which leads to a reliable estimate of antiferromagnetic order parameters in the phase diagram, in contrast to the conventional slave-boson mean-field theory. The obtained phase diagram shows the coexistence of antiferromagnetism and d x 2 - y 2 -wave superconductivity for the doping rate, δ, less than 10%. At half-filling, the renormalization of the J -term represents some aspects of quantum spin nature. For the finite doping case, there are two kinds of superconducting order parameters. The variational order parameter of the d-wave superconductivity increases as the doping rate decreases, which will correspond to the experimentally observed superconducting gap. In contrast, the actual expectation value of superconducting order parameter is proportional to δ in underdoped region and has a maximum near δ=0.11, which probably determines T c . We also speculate that the ground-state antiferromagnetic order, being destroyed at finite temperatures, gives the energy and temperature scale of the pseudogap. Applications to the inhomogeneous systems such as the vortex state and stripe state are discussed.
The nature of the metal-insulator Mott transition at zero temperature has been discussed for a number of years. Whether it occurs through a quantum critical point or through a first-order transition is expected to profoundly influence the nature of the finite-temperature phase diagram. In this paper, we study the zero temperature Mott transition in the two-dimensional Hubbard model on the square lattice with the variational cluster approximation. This takes into account the influence of antiferromagnetic short-range correlations. By contrast to single-site dynamical mean-field theory, the transition turns out to be first order even at zero temperature.