No Arabic abstract
Hubbard ladders are an important stepping stone to the physics of the two-dimensional Hubbard model. While many of their properties are accessible to numerical and analytical techniques, the question of whether weakly hole-doped Hubbard ladders are dominated by superconducting or charge-density-wave correlations has so far eluded a definitive answer. In particular, previous numerical simulations of Hubbard ladders have seen a much faster decay of superconducting correlations than expected based on analytical arguments. We revisit this question using a state-of-the-art implementation of the density matrix renormalization group algorithm that allows us to simulate larger system sizes with higher accuracy than before. Performing careful extrapolations of the results, we obtain improved estimates for the Luttinger liquid parameter and the correlation functions at long distances. Our results confirm that, as suggested by analytical considerations, superconducting correlations become dominant in the limit of very small doping.
The formation of stripes in six-leg Hubbard ladders with cylindrical boundary conditions is investigated for two different hole dopings, where the amplitude of the hole density modulation is determined in the limits of vanishing DMRG truncation errors and infinitely long ladders. The results give strong evidence that stripes exist in the ground state of these systems for strong but not for weak Hubbard couplings. The doping dependence of these findings is analysed.
We investigate the formation of stripes in $7chunks times 6$ Hubbard ladders with $4chunks$ holes doped away from half filling using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. A parallelized code allows us to keep enough density-matrix eigenstates (up to $m=8000$) and to study sufficiently large systems (with up to $7chunks = 21$ rungs) to extrapolate the stripe amplitude to the limits of vanishing DMRG truncation error and infinitely long ladders. Our work gives strong evidence that stripes exist in the ground state for strong coupling ($U=12t$) but that the structures found in the hole density at weaker coupling ($U=3t$) are an artifact of the DMRG approach.
We consider the effects of Umklapp processes in doped two-leg fermionic ladders. These may emerge either at special band fillings or as a result of the presence of external periodic potentials. We show that such Umklapp processes can lead to profound changes of physical properties and in particular stabilize pair-density wave phases.
Motivated by recent experimental progress on iron-based ladder compounds, we study the doped two-orbital Hubbard model for the two-leg ladder BaFe$_2$S$_3$. The model is constructed by using {it ab initio} hopping parameters and the ground state properties are investigated using the density matrix renormalization group method. We show that the $(pi,0)$ magnetic ordering at half-filling, with ferromagnetic rungs and antiferromagnetic legs, becomes incommensurate upon hole doping. Moreover, depending on the strength of the Hubbard $U$ coupling, other magnetic patterns, such as $(0,pi)$, are also stabilized. We found that the binding energy for two holes becomes negative for intermediate Hubbard interaction strength, indicating hole pairing. Due to the crystal-field split among orbitals, the holes primarily reside in one orbital, with the other one remaining half-filled. This resembles orbital selective Mott states. The formation of tight hole pairs continues with increasing hole density, as long as the magnetic order remains antiferromagnetic in one direction. The study of pair-pair correlations indicates the dominance of the intra-orbital spin-singlet channel, as opposed to other pairing channels. Although in a range of hole doping pairing correlations decay slowly, our results can also be interpreted as corresponding to a charge-density-wave made of pairs, a precursor of eventual superconductivity after interladder couplings are included. Such scenario of intertwined orders has been extensively discussed before in the cuprates, and our results suggest a similar physics could exist in ladder iron-based superconductors. Finally, we also show that a robust Hunds coupling is needed for pairing to occur.
We introduce a variational state for one-dimensional two-orbital Hubbard models that intuitively explains the recent computational discovery of pairing in these systems when hole doped. Our Ansatz is an optimized linear superposition of Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki valence bond states, rendering the combination a valence bond liquid dubbed Orbital Resonant Valence Bond. We show that the undoped (one electron/orbital) quantum state of two sites coupled into a global spin singlet is exactly written employing only spin-1/2 singlets linking orbitals at nearest-neighbor sites. Generalizing to longer chains defines our variational state visualized geometrically expressing our chain as a two-leg ladder, with one orbital per leg. As in Andersons resonating valence-bond state, our undoped variational state contains preformed singlet pairs that via doping become mobile leading to superconductivity. Doped real materials with one-dimensional substructures, two near-degenerate orbitals, and intermediate Hubbard U/W strengths -- W the carriers bandwidth -- could realize spin-singlet pairing if on-site anisotropies are small. If these anisotropies are robust, spin-triplet pairing emerges.