Ordered states in the disordered Hubbard model

The Hubbard model is studied in which disorder is introduced by putting the on-site interaction to zero on a fraction f of (impurity) sites of a square lattice. Using Quantum Monte Carlo methods and Dynamical Mean Field theory we find that antiferromagnetic long-range order is initially enhanced at half-filling and stabilized off half-filling by the disorder. The Mott-Hubbard charge gap of the pure system is broken up into two pieces by the disorder: one incompressible state remains at average density n=1 and another can be seen slightly below n=1+f. Qualitative explanations are provided.Comment: 17 pages, including 8 figures. Paper for Festschrift in honor of Hans van Leeuwen's 65th birthda

Electronic Structure of Paramagnetic V_2O_3: Strongly Correlated Metallic and Mott Insulating Phase

LDA+DMFT, the computation scheme merging the local density approximation and the dynamical mean-field theory, is employed to calculate spectra both below and above the Fermi energy and spin and orbital occupations in the correlated paramagnetic metallic and Mott insulating phase of V_2O_3. The self-consistent DMFT equations are solved by quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Room temperature calculations provide direct comparison with experiment. They show a significant increase of the quasiparticle height in comparison with the results at 1160 K. We also obtain new insights into the nature of the Mott-Hubbard transition in V_2O_3. Namely, it is found to be strikingly different from that in the one-band Hubbard model due to the orbital degrees of freedom. Furthermore we resolve the puzzle of the unexpectedly small Mott gap in Cr-doped V_2O_3.Comment: 14 pages, 22 figure

Conducting phase in the two-dimensional disordered Hubbard model

We study the temperature-dependent conductivity $\sigma(T)$ and spin susceptibility $\chi(T)$ of the two-dimensional disordered Hubbard model. Calculations of the current-current correlation function using the Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo method show that repulsion between electrons can significantly enhance the conductivity, and at low temperatures change the sign of $d\sigma/dT$ from positive (insulating behavior) to negative (conducting behavior). This result suggests the possibility of a metallic phase, and consequently a metal-insulator transition,in a two-dimensional microscopic model containing both interactions and disorder. The metallic phase is a non-Fermi liquid with local moments as deduced from a Curie-like temperature dependence of $\chi(T)$.Comment: 4 pages; 4 postscript figures; added (1) a new figure showing temperature dependence of spin susceptibility; (2) more references. accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Disorder-enhanced delocalization and local-moment quenching in a disordered antiferromagnet

The interplay of disorder and spin-fluctuation effects in a disordered antiferromagnet is studied. In the weak-disorder regime (W \le U), while the energy gap decreases rapidly with disorder, the sublattice magnetization, including quantum corrections, is found to remain essentially unchanged in the strong correlation limit. Magnon energies and Neel temperature are enhanced by disorder in this limit. A single paradigm of disorder-enhanced delocalization qualitatively accounts for all these weak disorder effects. Vertex corrections and magnon damping, which appear only at order (W/U)^4, are also studied. With increasing disorder a crossover is found at W \sim U, characterized by a rapid decrease in sublattice magnetization due to quenching of local moments, and formation of spin vacancies. The latter suggests a spin-dilution behavior, which is indeed observed in softened magnon modes, lowering of Neel temperature, and enhanced transverse spin fluctuations.Comment: 12 pages, includes 8 postscript figures. To appear in Physical Review B. References adde

Metallic ferromagnetism: Progress in our understanding of an old strong-coupling problem

Metallic ferromagnetism is in general an intermediate to strong coupling phenomenon. Since there do not exist systematic analytic methods to investigate such types of problems, the microscopic origin of metallic ferromagnetism is still not sufficiently understood. However, during the last two or three years remarkable progress was made in this field: It is now certain that even in the one-band Hubbard model metallic ferromagnetism is stable in dimensions $d=1,$ 2, and $\infty$ on regular lattices and at intermediate values of the interaction $U$ and density $n$. In this paper the basic questions and recent insights regarding the microscopic conditions favoring metallic ferromagnetism in this model are reviewed. These findings are contrasted with the results for the orbitally degenerate case.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, latex using vieweg.sty (enclosed); typos corrected; to appear in "Advances in Solid State Physics", Vol. 3

Constrained-path quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the zero-temperature disordered two-dimensional Hubbard model

We study the effects of disorder on long-range antiferromagnetic correlations in the half-filled, two dimensional, repulsive Hubbard model at T=0. A mean field approach is first employed to gain a qualitative picture of the physics and to guide our choice for a trial wave function in a constrained path quantum Monte Carlo (CPQMC) method that allows for a more accurate treatment of correlations. Within the mean field calculation, we observe both Anderson and Mott insulating antiferromagnetic phases. There are transitions to a paramagnet only for relatively weak coupling, U < 2t in the case of bond disorder, and U < 4t in the case of on-site disorder. Using ground-state CPQMC we demonstrate that this mean field approach significantly overestimates magnetic order. For U=4t, we find a critical bond disorder of Vc = (1.6 +- 0.4)t even though within mean field theory no paramagnetic phase is found for this value of the interaction. In the site disordered case, we find a critical disorder of Vc = (5.0 +- 0.5)t at U=4t.Comment: Revtex, 13 pages, 15 figures. Minor changes to title and abstract, discussion and references added, figures 5, 6, 8, 9 replaced with easier to read version

Ferromagnetism in the Hubbard model with orbital degeneracy in infinite dimensions

We study the ferromagnetism due to orbital degeneracy in the Hubbard model in infinite dimensions. The model contains the intraorbital repulsion $U$, the interorbital repulsion $U^\prime$, the exchange $J$ (Hund coupling) and the pair hopping $J^\prime$, where all of them originate from the on-site Coulomb interaction. The ground state of the effective one-site problem was obtained by exact diagonalizations. At the 1/4-filling, we found two insulating phases; one is a ferromagnetic phase with alternating orbital order and the other is antiferromagnetic one with uniform orbital order. If electrons are doped into the 1/4-filling, the ferromagnetic phase still survives and becomes metallic, while the antiferromagnetic phase disappears. This result indicates that the double-exchange mechanism is relevant to stabilize metallic ferromagnetism in infinite dimensions.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex, 3 figures, corrected some typos and references, to be published in Phys. Rev. B (Rapid Communication

Influence of Spin Wave Excitations on the Ferromagnetic Phase Diagram in the Hubbard-Model

The subject of the present paper is the theoretical description of collective electronic excitations, i.e. spin waves, in the Hubbard-model. Starting with the widely used Random-Phase-Approximation, which combines Hartree-Fock theory with the summation of the two-particle ladder, we extend the theory to a more sophisticated single particle approximation, namely the Spectral-Density-Ansatz. Doing so we have to introduce a `screened` Coulomb-interaction rather than the bare Hubbard-interaction in order to obtain physically reasonable spinwave dispersions. The discussion following the technical procedure shows that comparison of standard RPA with our new approximation reduces the occurrence of a ferromagnetic phase further with respect to the phase-diagrams delivered by the single particle theories.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, RevTex4, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Particle-Hole Symmetry and the Effect of Disorder on the Mott-Hubbard Insulator

Recent experiments have emphasized that our understanding of the interplay of electron correlations and randomness in solids is still incomplete. We address this important issue and demonstrate that particle-hole (ph) symmetry plays a crucial role in determining the effects of disorder on the transport and thermodynamic properties of the half-filled Hubbard Hamiltonian. We show that the low-temperature conductivity decreases with increasing disorder when ph-symmetry is preserved, and shows the opposite behavior, i.e. conductivity increases with increasing disorder, when ph-symmetry is broken. The Mott insulating gap is insensitive to weak disorder when there is ph-symmetry, whereas in its absence the gap diminishes with increasing disorder.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Disorder and Impurities in Hubbard-Antiferromagnets

We study the influence of disorder and randomly distributed impurities on the properties of correlated antiferromagnets. To this end the Hubbard model with (i) random potentials, (ii) random hopping elements, and (iii) randomly distributed values of interaction is treated using quantum Monte Carlo and dynamical mean-field theory. In cases (i) and (iii) weak disorder can lead to an enhancement of antiferromagnetic (AF) order: in case (i) by a disorder-induced delocalization, in case (iii) by binding of free carriers at the impurities. For strong disorder or large impurity concentration antiferromagnetism is eventually destroyed. Random hopping leaves the local moment stable but AF order is suppressed by local singlet formation. Random potentials induce impurity states within the charge gap until it eventually closes. Impurities with weak interaction values shift the Hubbard gap to a density off half-filling. In both cases an antiferromagnetic phase without charge gap is observed.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, latex using vieweg.sty (enclosed); typos corrected, references updated; to appear in "Advances in Solid State Physics", Vol. 3