No Arabic abstract
We investigate paramagnetic metal-insulator transitions in the infinite-dimensional ionic Hubbard model at finite temperatures. By means of the dynamical mean-field theory with an impurity solver of the continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method, we show that an increase in the interaction strength brings about a crossover from a band insulating phase to a metallic one, followed by a first-order transition to a Mott insulating phase. The first-order transition turns into a crossover above a certain critical temperature, which becomes higher as the staggered lattice potential is increased. Further, analysis of the temperature dependence of the energy density discloses that the intermediate metallic phase is a Fermi liquid. It is also found that the metallic phase is stable against strong staggered potentials even at very low temperatures.
The finite-temperature phase diagram of the Hubbard model in $d=3$ is obtained from renormalization-group analysis. It exhibits, around half filling, an antiferromagnetic phase and, between 30%--40% electron or hole doping from half filling, a new $tau $ phase in which the electron hopping strength $t$ asymptotically becomes infinite under repeated rescalings. Next to the $tau $ phase, a first-order phase boundary with very narrow phase separation (less than 2% jump in electron density) occurs. At temperatures above the $tau $ phase, an incommensurate spin modulation phase is indicated. In $d=2$, we find that the Hubbard model has no phase transition at finite temperature.
We investigate the phases of the ionic Hubbard model in a two-dimensional square lattice using determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC). At half-filling, when the interaction strength or the staggered potential dominate we find Mott and band insulators, respectively. When these two energies are of the same order we find a metallic region. Charge and magnetic structure factors demonstrate the presence of antiferromagnetism only in the Mott region, although the externally imposed density modulation is present everywhere in the phase diagram. Away from half-filling, other insulating phases are found. Kinetic energy correlations do not give clear signals for the existence of a bond-ordered phase.
We study the phase diagram of the ionic Hubbard model (IHM) at half-filling using dynamical mean field theory (DMFT), with two impurity solvers, namely, iterated perturbation theory (IPT) and continuous time quantum Monte Carlo (CTQMC). The physics of the IHM is governed by the competition between the staggered potential $Delta$ and the on-site Hubbard U. In both the methods we find that for a finite $Delta$ and at zero temperature, anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) order sets in beyond a threshold $U=U_{AF}$ via a first order phase transition below which the system is a paramagnetic band insulator. Both the methods show a clear evidence for a transition to a half-metal phase just after the AFM order is turned on, followed by the formation of an AFM insulator on further increasing U. We show that the results obtained within both the methods have good qualitative and quantitative consistency in the intermediate to strong coupling regime. On increasing the temperature, the AFM order is lost via a first order phase transition at a transition temperature $T_{AF}(U, Delta)$ within both the methods, for weak to intermediate values of U/t. But in the strongly correlated regime, where the effective low energy Hamiltonian is the Heisenberg model, IPT is unable to capture the thermal (Neel) transition from the AFM phase to the paramagnetic phase, but the CTQMC does. As a result, at any finite temperature T, DMFT+CTQMC shows a second phase transition (not seen within DMFT+IPT) on increasing U beyond $U_{AF}$. At $U_N > U_{AF}$, when the Neel temperature $T_N$ for the effective Heisenberg model becomes lower than T, the AFM order is lost via a second order transition. In the 3-dimensonal parameter space of $(U/t,T/t,Delta/t)$, there is a line of tricritical points that separates the surfaces of first and second order phase transitions.
Quantum phase transitions in the Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice are investigated in the variational cluster approximation. The critical interaction for the paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic phase transition is found to be in remarkable agreement with a recent large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulation. Calculated staggered magnetization increases continuously with $U$ and thus we find the phase transition is of a second order. We also find that the semimetal-insulator transition occurs at infinitesimally small interaction and thus a paramagnetic insulating state appears in a wide interaction range. A crossover behavior of electrons from itinerant to localized character found in the calculated single-particle excitation spectra and short-range spin correlation functions indicates that an effective spin model for the paramagnetic insulating phase is far from a simple Heisenberg model with a nearest-neighbor exchange interaction.
We study the two-dimensional Kane-Mele-Hubbard model at half filling by means of quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We present a refined phase boundary for the quantum spin liquid. The topological insulator at finite Hubbard interaction strength is adiabatically connected to the groundstate of the Kane-Mele model. In the presence of spin-orbit coupling, magnetic order at large Hubbard U is restricted to the transverse direction. The transition from the topological band insulator to the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator is in the universality class of the three-dimensional XY model. The numerical data suggest that the spin liquid to topological insulator and spin liquid to Mott insulator transitions are both continuous.