X-ray spectrum estimation from transmission measurements: preliminary results

International audienceIn this study, we propose a method to estimate the polychromatic X-ray spectrum of a microtomograph by measuring transmissions through a series of phantoms with known composition and thickness. An initially lognormal spectrum is iteratively optimized in order to obtain the best fit for all measurements. The validity of the estimated X-ray spectrum is verified based on an independent phantom

Local electronic nematicity in the one-band Hubbard model

Nematicity is a well known property of liquid crystals and has been recently discussed in the context of strongly interacting electrons. An electronic nematic phase has been seen by many experiments in certain strongly correlated materials, in particular, in the pseudogap phase generic to many hole-doped cuprate superconductors. Recent measurements in high $T_c$ superconductors has shown even if the lattice is perfectly rotationally symmetric, the ground state can still have strongly nematic local properties. Our study of the two-dimensional Hubbard model provides strong support of the recent experimental results on local rotational $C_4$ symmetry breaking. The variational cluster approach is used here to show the possibility of an electronic nematic state and the proximity of the underlying symmetry-breaking ground state within the Hubbard model. We identify this nematic phase in the overdoped region and show that the local nematicity decreases with increasing electron filling. Our results also indicate that strong Coulomb interaction may drive the nematic phase into a phase similar to the stripe structure. The calculated spin (magnetic) correlation function in momentum space shows the effects resulting from real-space nematicity

Pyqcm: An open-source Python library for quantum cluster methods

Pyqcm is a Python/C++ library that implements a few quantum cluster methods with an exact diagonalization impurity solver. Quantum cluster methods are used in the study of strongly correlated electrons to provide an approximate solution to Hubbard-like models. The methods covered by this library are Cluster Perturbation Theory (CPT), the Variational Cluster Approach (VCA) and Cellular (or Cluster) Dynamical Mean Field Theory (CDMFT). The impurity solver (the technique used to compute the cluster's interacting Green function) is exact diagonalization from sparse matrices, using the Lanczos algorithm and variants thereof. The core library is written in C++ for performance, but the interface is in Python, for ease of use and inter-operability with the numerical Python ecosystem. The library is distributed under the GPL license.Comment: Submission to SciPost. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0806.269

First order Mott transition at zero temperature in two dimensions: Variational plaquette study

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.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, version 2 with additional results for 8 bath site

Mixed-Spin Ladders and Plaquette Spin Chains

We investigate low-energy properties of a generalized spin ladder model with both of the spin alternation and the bond alternation, which allows us to systematically study not only ladder systems but also alternating spin chains. By exploiting non-linear $\sigma$ model techniques we study the model with particular emphasis on the competition between gapful and gapless states. Our approach turns out to provide a more consistent semi-classical description of alternating spin chains than that in the previous work. We also study a closely related model, i.e., a spin chain with plaquette structure, and show that frustration causes little effect on its low-energy properties so far as the strength of frustration is weaker than a certain critical value.Comment: 7 pages, REVTeX, 3 figures, submitted to JPS

Collective excitations in ferrimagnetic Heisenberg ladders

We study ground-state properties and the low-lying excitations of Heisenberg spin ladders composed of two ferrimagnetic chains with alternating site spins $(S_1>S_2)$ by using the bosonic Dyson-Maleev formalism and Lanczos numerical techniques. The emphasis is on properties of the ferrimagnetic phase which is stable for antiferromagnetic interchain couplings $J_{\perp}\geq 0$. There are two basic implications of the underlying lattice structure: (i) the spin-wave excitations form folded acoustic and optical branches in the extended Brillouin zone and (ii) the ground state parameters (such as the on-site magnetizations and spin-stiffness constant) show a crossover behavior in the weak-coupling region $0<J_{\perp}<1$. The above peculiarities of the ladder ferrimagnetic state are studied up to second order in the quasiparticle interaction and by a numerical diagonalization of ladders containing up to N=12 rungs. The presented results for the ground-state parameters and the excitation spectrum can be used in studies on the low-temperature thermodynamics of ferrimagnetic ladders.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure

The spectral weight of the Hubbard model through cluster perturbation theory

We calculate the spectral weight of the one- and two-dimensional Hubbard models, by performing exact diagonalizations of finite clusters and treating inter-cluster hopping with perturbation theory. Even with relatively modest clusters (e.g. 12 sites), the spectra thus obtained give an accurate description of the exact results. Thus, spin-charge separation (i.e. an extended spectral weight bounded by singularities) is clearly recognized in the one-dimensional Hubbard model, and so is extended spectral weight in the two-dimensional Hubbard model.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure