Pseudogap induced by short-range spin correlations in a doped Mott insulator

We study the evolution of a Mott-Hubbard insulator into a correlated metal upon doping in the two-dimensional Hubbard model using the Cellular Dynamical Mean Field Theory. Short-range spin correlations create two additional bands apart from the familiar Hubbard bands in the spectral function. Even a tiny doping into this insulator causes a jump of the Fermi energy to one of these additional bands and an immediate momentum dependent suppression of the spectral weight at this Fermi energy. The pseudogap is closely tied to the existence of these bands. This suggests a strong-coupling mechanism that arises from short-range spin correlations and large scattering rates for the pseudogap phenomenon seen in several cuprates.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Is the Mott transition relevant to f-electron metals ?

We study how a finite hybridization between a narrow correlated band and a wide conduction band affects the Mott transition. At zero temperature, the hybridization is found to be a relevant perturbation, so that the Mott transition is suppressed by Kondo screening. In contrast, a first-order transition remains at finite temperature, separating a local moment phase and a Kondo- screened phase. The first-order transition line terminates in two critical endpoints. Implications for experiments on f-electron materials such as the Cerium alloy Ce$_{0.8}$La$_{0.1}$Th$_{0.1}$ are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Only Fermi-Liquids are Metals

Any singular deviation from Landau Fermi-liquid theory appears to lead, for arbitrarily small concentration of impurities coupling to a non-conserved quantity, to a vanishing density of states at the chemical potential and infinite resistivity as temperature approaches zero. Applications to copper-oxide metals including the temperature dependence of the anisotropy in resistivity, and to other cases of non Fermi-liquids are discussed.Comment: 11 pages,revtex, 1 Postscript figur

Temperature-dependent Fermi surface evolution in heavy fermion CeIrIn5

In Cerium-based heavy electron materials, the 4f electron's magnetic moments bind to the itinerant quasiparticles to form composite heavy quasiparticles at low temperature. The volume of the Fermi surfacein the Brillouin zone incorporates the moments to produce a "large FS" due to the Luttinger theorem. When the 4f electrons are localized free moments, a "small FS" is induced since it contains only broad bands of conduction spd electrons. We have addressed theoretically the evolution of the heavy fermion FS as a function of temperature, using a first principles dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) approach combined with density functional theory (DFT+DMFT). We focus on the archetypical heavy electrons in CeIrIn5, which is believed to be near a quantum critical point. Upon cooling, both the quantum oscillation frequencies and cyclotron masses show logarithmic scaling behavior (~ ln(T_0/T)) with different characteristic temperatures T_0 = 130 and 50 K, respectively. The resistivity coherence peak observed at T ~ 50 K is the result of the competition between the binding of incoherent 4f electrons to the spd conduction electrons at Fermi level and the formation of coherent 4f electrons.Comment: 5 pages main article,3 figures for the main article, 2 page Supplementary information, 2 figures for the Supplementary information. Supplementary movie 1 and 2 are provided on the webpage(http://www-ph.postech.ac.kr/~win/supple.html

Resonating Valence Bond Theory of Superconductivity for Dopant Carriers: Application to the Cobaltates

Within the $t$--$J$ model Hamiltonian we present a RVB mean field theory directly in terms of dopant particles. We apply this theory to $\mathrm{Na}_{x}\mathrm{CoO_{2}}\cdot y$ and show that the resulting phase diagram $T_c$ versus doping is in qualitative agreement with the experimental results

Strength of Correlations in electron and hole doped cuprates

High temperature superconductivity was achieved by introducing holes in a parent compound consisting of copper oxide layers separated by spacer layers. It is possible to dope some of the parent compounds with electrons, and their physical properties are bearing some similarities but also significant differences from the hole doped counterparts. Here, we use a recently developed first principles method, to study the electron doped cuprates and elucidate the deep physical reasons why their behavior is so different than the hole doped materials. We find that electron doped compounds are Slater insulators, e.g. a material where the insulating behavior is the result of the presence of magnetic long range order. This is in sharp contrast with the hole doped materials, where the parent compound is a Mott charge transfer insulator, namely a material which is insulating due to the strong electronic correlations but not due to the magnetic order.Comment: submitted to Nature Physic

Quantum Monte Carlo Study of Strongly Correlated Electrons: Cellular Dynamical Mean-Field Theory

We study the Hubbard model using the Cellular Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (CDMFT) with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. We present the algorithmic details of CDMFT with the Hirsch-Fye QMC method for the solution of the self-consistently embedded quantum cluster problem. We use the one- and two-dimensional half-filled Hubbard model to gauge the performance of CDMFT+QMC particularly for small clusters by comparing with the exact results and also with other quantum cluster methods. We calculate single-particle Green's functions and self-energies on small clusters to study their size dependence in one- and two-dimensions.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figure

Collective Modes in the Loop Current Ordered Phase of Cuprates

Recently two branches of weakly dispersive collective modes have been discovered in under-doped cuprates by inelastic neutron scattering. Polarization analysis reveals that the modes are magnetic excitations. They are only visible for temperatures below the transition temperature to a broken symmetry phase which was discovered earlier and their intensity increases as temperature is further decreased. The broken symmetry phase itself has symmetries consistent with ordering of orbital current loops within a unit-cell without breaking translational symmetry. In order to calculate the collective modes of such a state we add quantum terms to the Ashkin-Teller (AT) model with which the classical loop current order has been described. We derive that the mean field ground state of the quantum model is a product over all unit-cells of linear combination of the four possible classical configurations of the loop current order in each unit-cell. The collective modes are calculated by using a generalized Holstein-Primakoff boson representation of orbital moment operators and lead to three branches of gapped weakly dispersive collective modes. The experimental results are consistent with the two lower energy branches; the third mode is at a higher energy than looked for by present neutron scattering experiments and might also be over-damped. Implications of the discovery of the collective modes are discussed.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Short-range spin correlations and induced local spin-singlet amplitude in the Hubbard model

In this paper, from the microscopic Hubbard Hamiltonian we extract the local spin-singlet amplitude due to short-range spin correlations, and quantify its strength near half-filling. As a first application of the present approach, we study a problem of the energy dispersion and its d-wave modulation in the insulating cuprates, Sr$_{2}$CuO$_{2}$Cl$_{2}$ and Ca$_{2}$CuO$_{2}$Cl$_{2}$. Without any adjustable parameters, most puzzling issues are naturally and quantitatively explained within the present approach.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure