Electronic instabilities of a Hubbard model approached as a large array
of coupled chains: competition between d-wave superconductivity and pseudogap
phase
We study the electronic instabilities in a 2D Hubbard model where one of the
dimensions has a finite width, so that it can be considered as a large array of
coupled chains. The finite transverse size of the system gives rise to a
discrete string of Fermi points, with respective electron fields that, due to
their mutual interaction, acquire anomalous scaling dimensions depending on the
point of the string. Using bosonization methods, we show that the anomalous
scaling dimensions vanish when the number of coupled chains goes to infinity,
implying the Fermi liquid behavior of a 2D system in that limit. However, when
the Fermi level is at the Van Hove singularity arising from the saddle points
of the 2D dispersion, backscattering and Cooper-pair scattering lead to the
breakdown of the metallic behavior at low energies. These interactions are
taken into account through their renormalization group scaling, studying in
turn their influence on the nonperturbative bosonization of the model. We show
that, at a certain low-energy scale, the anomalous electron dimension diverges
at the Fermi points closer to the saddle points of the 2D dispersion. The
d-wave superconducting correlations become also large at low energies, but
their growth is cut off as the suppression of fermion excitations takes place
first, extending progressively along the Fermi points towards the diagonals of
the 2D Brillouin zone. We stress that this effect arises from the vanishing of
the charge stiffness at the Fermi points, characterizing a critical behavior
that is well captured within our nonperturbative approach.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure