Electron-phonon interaction in Strongly Correlated Systems

The Hubbard-Holstein model is a simple model including both electron-phonon interaction and electron-electron correlations. We review a body of theoretical work investigating the effects of strong correlations on the electron-phonon interaction. We focus on the regime, relevant to high-T_c superconductors, in which the electron correlations are dominant. We find that the electron-phonon interaction can still have important signatures, even if many anomalies appear, and the overall effect is far from conventional. In particular in the paramagnetic phase the effects of phonons are much reduced in the low-energy properties, while the high-energy physics can be strongly affected by phonons. Moreover, the electron-phonon interaction can still give rise to important effects, like phase separation and charge-ordering, and it assumes a predominance of forward scattering even if the bare interaction is assumed to be local (momentum independent). Antiferromagnetic correlations reduce the screening effects due to electron-electron interactions and revive the electron-phonon effects.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure

First-Order Pairing Transition and Single-Particle Spectral Function in the Attractive Hubbard Model

A Dynamical Mean Field Theory analysis of the attractive Hubbard model is carried out. We focus on the normal state upon restricting to solutions where superconducting order is not allowed. Nevertheless a clear first-order pairing transition as a function of the coupling takes place at all the electron densities out of half-filling. The transition occurs between a Fermi liquid, stable for $U U_c$. The spectral function in the Fermi liquid phase is constituted by a low energy structure around the Fermi level (similar to the Kondo resonance of the repulsive half-filled model), which disappears discontinuously at $U=U_c$, and two high energy features (lower and upper Hubbard bands), which persist in the insulating phase.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Electron-phonon coupling close to a metal-insulator transition in one dimension

We consider a one-dimensional system of electrons interacting via a short-range repulsion and coupled to phonons close to the metal-insulator transition at half filling. We argue that the metal-insulator transition can be described as a standard one dimensional incommensurate to commensurate transition, even if the electronic system is coupled to the lattice distortion. By making use of known results for this transition, we prove that low-momentum phonons do not play any relevant role close to half-filling, unless their coupling to the electrons is large in comparison with the other energy scales present in the problem. In other words the effective strength of the low-momentum transferred electron-phonon coupling does not increase close to the metal-insulator transition, even though the effective velocity of the mobile carriers is strongly diminished.Comment: 20 pages, REVTEX styl

On localization effects in underdoped cuprates

We comment on transport experiments in underdoped LaSrCuO in the non-superconducting phase. The temperature dependence of the resistance strongly resembles what is expected from standard localization theory. However this theory fails, when comparing with experiments in more detail.Comment: 8 pages, to be published in J. of Superconductivit

Electron-phonon Interaction close to a Mott transition

The effect of Holstein electron-phonon interaction on a Hubbard model close to a Mott-Hubbard transition at half-filling is investigated by means of Dynamical Mean-Field Theory. We observe a reduction of the effective mass that we interpret in terms of a reduced effective repulsion. When the repulsion is rescaled to take into account this effect, the quasiparticle low-energy features are unaffected by the electron-phonon interaction. Phonon features are only observed within the high-energy Hubbard bands. The lack of electron-phonon fingerprints in the quasiparticle physics can be explained interpreting the quasiparticle motion in terms of rare fast processes.Comment: 4 pages, 3 color figures. Slightly revised text and references. Kondo effect result added in Fig. 2 for comparison with DMFT dat

Stripe ordering and two-gap model for underdoped cuprates

The evidence of edge-gaps around the M-points in the metallic state of underdoped cuprates has triggered a very active debate on their origin. We first consider the possibility that this spectroscopic feature results from a quasi-static charge ordering taking place in the underdoped regime. It comes out that to explain the coexistence of gaps and arcs on the Fermi surface the charge modulation should be in an eggbox form. In the lack of evidences for that, we then investigate the local pairing induced by charge-stripe fluctuations. A proper description of the strong anisotropy of both the interactions and the Fermi velocities requires a two-gap model for pairing. We find that a gap due to incoherent pairing forms near the M-points, while coherence is established by the stiffness of the pairing near the nodal points. The model allows for a continuos evolution from a pure BCS pairing (over- and optimally doped regime) to a mixed boson-fermion model (heavily underdoped regime).Comment: 4 pages, Proceedings of M2S-HTS

Quasi-particle dephasing time in disordered d-wave superconductors

We evaluate the low-temperature cutoff for quantum interference 1/tf induced in a d-wave superconductor by the diffusion enhanced quasiparticle interactions in the presence of disorder. We carry out our analysis in the framework of the non-linear sigma-model which allows a direct calculation of 1/tf, as the mass of the transverse modes of the theory. Only the triplet amplitude in the particle-hole channel and the Cooper amplitude with is pairing symmetry contribute to 1/tf. We discuss the possible relevance of our results to the present disagreement between thermal transport data in cuprates and the localization theory for d-wave quasiparticles

Phase Separation close to the density-driven Mott transition in the Hubbard-Holstein model

The density driven Mott transition is studied by means of Dynamical Mean-Field Theory in the Hubbard-Holstein model, where the Hubbard term leading to the Mott transition is supplemented by an electron-phonon (e-ph) term. We show that an intermediate e-ph coupling leads to a first-order transition at T=0, which is accompanied by phase separation between a metal and an insulator. The compressibility in the metallic phase is substantially enhanced. At quite larger values of the coupling a polaronic phase emerges coexisting with a non-polaronic metal.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Slightly revised text. More details in Fig.1 and 2. Smaller size version of Fig.