One promising way to enhance superconductivity is to have coexisting wide and incipient narrow bands, where the Fermi level intersecting the wide band lies just above the narrow band, by which finite-energy spin fluctuations act as glue to mediate pair scattering. As an extreme case of the narrow band dispersion, we investigate spin-fluctuation-mediated superconductivity in two-dimensional Hubbard models with an incipient flat band. For all of the systems investigated in this study, the Kagome, Lieb, and bilayer square lattices with a flat band, we find that spin-singlet pairing superconductivity is enhanced when the flat band is nearly fully filled, due to the interband pair scattering even when the flat band becomes dispersive by correlation effects. Among these models, enhancement of superconductivity is weak in the Lieb lattice, possibly because the density of states of the wide band goes to zero at the Dirac point where the flat and wide bands intersect. Also, when the electron density is smaller so that the flat band approaches half-filling, ferromagnetic spin fluctuations and spin-triplet pairing arises, which does not develop strongly compared to the case of the spin-singlet pairing for the incipient band situation.
We study possible charge instabilities in doped Mott insulators by employing the two-dimensional t - J model with a positive value of the next nearest-neighbor hopping integral on a square lattice, which is applicable to electron-doped cuprates. Although the d -wave charge density wave (flux phase) and d -wave Pomeranchuk instability (nematic order) are dominant instabilities for a negative that corresponds to hole-doped cuprates, we find that those instabilities are strongly suppressed and become relevant only rather close to half filling. Instead, various types of bond orders with modulation vectors close to are dominant in a moderate doping region. Phase separation is also enhanced, but it can be suppressed substantially by the nearest-neighbor Coulomb repulsion without affecting the aforementioned charge instabilities.
Metallic states near the Mott insulator show a variety of quantum phases, including various magnetic, charge-ordered states and high-temperature superconductivity in various transition metal oxides and organic solids. The emergence of a variety of phases and their competitions are likely intimately associated with quantum transitions between the electron-correlation-driven Mott insulator and metals characterized by its criticality, and is related to many central questions of condensed matter. The quantum criticality is, however, not well understood when the transition is controlled by the bandwidth through physical parameters such as pressure. Here, we quantitatively estimate the universality class of the transition characterized by a comprehensive set of critical exponents by using a variational Monte Carlo method implemented as an open-source innovated quantum many-body solver, with the help of established scaling laws at a typical bandwidth-controlled Mott transition. The criticality indicates a weaker charge and density instability in contrast to the filling-controlled transition realized by carrier doping, implying a weaker instability to superconductivity as well. The present comprehensive clarification opens up a number of routes for quantitative experimental studies for complete understanding of elusive quantum Mott transition and nearby strange metal that cultivate future design of functionality.
Fermion systems with flat bands can boost superconductivity by enhancing the density of states at the Fermi level. We use quasiexact numerical methods to show that repulsive interactions between spinless fermions in a one-dimensional (1D) flat-band system, the Creutz ladder, give a finite pairing energy that increases with repulsion, though charge quasiorder remains dominant. Adding an attractive component shifts the balance in favor of superconductivity and the interplay of two flat bands further yields a remarkable enhancement of superconductivity, well outside of known paradigms for 1D fermions.
Motivated by recent experiments realizing correlated phenomena and superconductivity in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals devices, we consider the general problem of whether correlation effects may be enhanced by modifying band structure while keeping a fixed weak interaction strength. Using determinantal quantum Monte Carlo, we study the 2D Hubbard model for two different band structures: a regular nearest-neighbor tight-binding model and a partially flat-band structure containing a nondispersing region, with identical total noninteracting bandwidth
Wtot. For both repulsive and attractive weak interactions ($|U|\ensuremath{\ll}{W}_{\mathrm{tot}}$), correlated phenomena are significantly stronger in the partially flat model. In the repulsive case, even with
U being an order of magnitude smaller than
Wtot, we find the presence of a Mott insulating state near half filling of the flat region in momentum space. In the attractive case, where generically the ground state is superconducting, the partially flat model exhibits significantly enhanced superconducting transition temperatures. These results suggest the possibility of engineering correlation effects in materials by tuning the noninteracting electronic dispersion.
We consider the one-band Hubbard model on the square lattice by using variational and Green's function Monte Carlo methods, where the variational states contain Jastrow and backflow correlations on top of an uncorrelated wave function that includes BCS pairing and magnetic order. At half-filling, where the ground state is antiferromagnetically ordered for any value of the on-site interaction
U, we can identify a hidden critical point
UMott, above which a finite BCS pairing is stabilized in the wave function. The existence of this point is reminiscent of the Mott transition in the paramagnetic sector and determines a separation between a Slater insulator (at small values of
U), where magnetism induces a potential energy gain, and a Mott insulator (at large values of
U), where magnetic correlations drive a kinetic energy gain. Most importantly, the existence of
UMott has crucial consequences when doping the system: We observe a tendency for phase separation into hole-rich and hole-poor regions only when doping the Slater insulator, while the system is uniform by doping the Mott insulator. Superconducting correlations are clearly observed above
UMott, leading to the characteristic dome structure in doping. Furthermore, we show that the energy gain due to the presence of a finite BCS pairing above
UMott shifts from the potential to the kinetic sector by increasing the value of the Coulomb repulsion.