Resistivity and optical conductivity of cuprates within the t-J model

The optical conductivity $\sigma(\omega)$ and the d.c. resistivity $\rho(T)$ within the extended t-J model on a square lattice, as relevant to high-$T_c$ cuprates, are reinvestigated using the exact-diagonalization method for small systems, improved by performing a twisted boundary condition averaging. The influence of the next-nearest-neighbor hopping $t'$ is also considered. The behaviour of results at intermediate doping is consistent with a marginal-Fermi-liquid scenario and in the case of $t'=0$ for $\omega>T$ follows the power law $\sigma \propto \omega^{-\nu}$ with $\nu \sim 0.65$ consistent with experiments. At low doping $c_h<0.1$ for $T<J$ $\sigma(\omega)$ develops a shoulder at $\omega\sim \omega^*$, consistent with the observed mid-infrared peak in experiments, accompanied by a shallow dip for $\omega < \omega^*$. This region is characterized by the resistivity saturation, whereas a more coherent transport appears at $T < T^*$ producing a more pronounced decrease in $\rho(T)$. The behavior of the normalized resistivity $c_h \rho(T)$ is within a factor of 2 quantitatively consistent with experiments in cuprates.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

Breakdown of the Luttinger sum rule within the Mott-Hubbard insulator

The validity of the Luttinger sum rule is investigated within the prototype tight-binding model of interacting fermions in one dimension, i.e., the t-V model including the next-nearest neighbor hopping t' in order to break the particle-hole symmetry. Scaling analysis of finite-system results at half-filling reveals evident breakdown of the sum rule in the regime of large gap at V >> t, while the sum rule appears to recover together with vanishing of the Mott-Hubbard gap.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Conductivity in a disordered one-dimensional system of interacting fermions

Dynamical conductivity in a disordered one-dimensional model of interacting fermions is studied numerically at high temperatures and in the weak-interaction regime in order to find a signature of many-body localization and vanishing d.c. transport coefficients. On the contrary, we find in the regime of moderately strong local disorder that the d.c. conductivity sigma0 scales linearly with the interaction strength while being exponentially dependent on the disorder. According to the behavior of the charge stiffness evaluated at the fixed number of particles, the absence of the many-body localization seems related to an increase of the effective localization length with the interaction.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PR

Coexistence of Anomalous and Normal Diffusion in Integrable Mott Insulators

We study the finite-momentum spin dynamics in the one-dimensional XXZ spin chain within the Ising-type regime at high temperatures using density autocorrelations within linear response theory and real-time propagation of nonequilibrium densities. While for the nonintegrable model results are well consistent with normal diffusion, the finite-size integrable model unveils the coexistence of anomalous and normal diffusion in different regimes of time. In particular, numerical results show a Gaussian relaxation at smallest nonzero momenta which we relate to nonzero stiffness in a grand canonical ensemble. For larger but still small momenta normal-like diffusion is recovered. Similar results for the model of impenetrable particles also help to resolve rather conflicting conclusions on transport in integrable Mott insulators.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Eigenstate thermalization within isolated spin-chain systems

The thermalization phenomenon and many-body quantum statistical properties are studied on the example of several observables in isolated spin-chain systems, both integrable and generic non-integrable ones. While diagonal matrix elements for non-integrable models comply with the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), the integrable systems show evident deviations and similarity to properties of noninteracting many-fermion models. The finite-size scaling reveals that the crossover between two regimes is given by a scale closely related to the scattering length. Low-frequency off-diagonal matrix elements related to d.c. transport quantities in a generic system also follow the behavior analogous to the ETH, however unrelated to the one of diagonal elements

Magnetic response of nonmagnetic impurities in cuprates

A theory of the local magnetic response of a nonmagnetic impurity in a doped antiferromagnet, as relevant to the normal state in cuprates, is presented. It is based on the assumption of the overdamped collective mode in the bulk system and on the evidence, that equal-time spin correlations are only weakly renormalized in the vicinity of the impurity. The theory relates the Kondo-like behavior of the local susceptibility to the anomalous temperature dependence of the bulk magnetic susceptibility, where the observed increase of the Kondo temperature with doping reflects the crossover to the Fermi liquid regime and the spatial distribution of the magnetization is given by bulk antiferromagnetic correlations.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure