No Arabic abstract
The ground state phase diagram of the 1D Hubbard chain with pair-hopping interaction is studied. The analysis of the model is performed using the continuum-limit field theory approach and exact diagonalization studies. At half-filling the phase diagram is shown to consist of two superconducting states with Cooper pair center-of-mass momentum Q=0 (BCS-eta_0 phase) and Q=pi (eta_pi-phase) and four insulating phases corresponding to the Mott antiferromagnet, the Peierls dimerized phase, the charge-density-wave (CDW) insulator as well as an unconventional insulating phase characterized by the coexistence of a CDW and a bond-located staggered magnetization. Away from half-filling the phase diagram consists of the superconducting BCS-eta_0 and eta_pi phases and the metallic Luttinger-liquid phase. The BCS-eta_0 phase exhibits smooth crossover from a weak-coupling BCS type to a strong coupling local-pair regime. The eta_pi phase shows properties of the doublon (zero size Cooper pair) superconductor with Cooper pair center-of-mass momentum Q=pi. The transition into the eta_pi- paired state corresponds to an abrupt change in the groundstate structure. After the transition the conduction band is completely destroyed and a new eta_pi-pair band corresponding to the strongly correlated doublon motion is created.
By employing unbiased numerical methods, we show that pulse irradiation can induce unconventional superconductivity even in the Mott insulator of the Hubbard model. The superconductivity found here in the photoexcited state is due to the $eta$-pairing mechanism, characterized by staggered pair-density-wave oscillations in the off-diagonal long-range correlation, and is absent in the ground-state phase diagram; i.e., it is induced neither by a change of the effective interaction of the Hubbard model nor by simple photocarrier doping. Because of the selection rule, we show that the nonlinear optical response is essential to increase the number of $eta$ pairs and thus enhance the superconducting correlation in the photoexcited state. Our finding demonstrates that nonequilibrium many-body dynamics is an alternative pathway to access a new exotic quantum state that is absent in the ground-state phase diagram and also provides an alternative mechanism for enhancing superconductivity.
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 dualism between superconductivity and charge/spin modulations (the so-called stripes) dominates the phase diagram of many strongly-correlated systems. A prominent example is given by the Hubbard model, where these phases compete and possibly coexist in a wide regime of electron dopings for both weak and strong couplings. Here, we investigate this antagonism within a variational approach that is based upon Jastrow-Slater wave functions, including backflow correlations, which can be treated within a quantum Monte Carlo procedure. We focus on clusters having a ladder geometry with $M$ legs (with $M$ ranging from $2$ to $10$) and a relatively large number of rungs, thus allowing us a detailed analysis in terms of the stripe length. We find that stripe order with periodicity $lambda=8$ in the charge and $2lambda=16$ in the spin can be stabilized at doping $delta=1/8$. Here, there are no sizable superconducting correlations and the ground state has an insulating character. A similar situation, with $lambda=6$, appears at $delta=1/6$. Instead, for smaller values of dopings, stripes can be still stabilized, but they are weakly metallic at $delta=1/12$ and metallic with strong superconducting correlations at $delta=1/10$, as well as for intermediate (incommensurate) dopings. Remarkably, we observe that spin modulation plays a major role in stripe formation, since it is crucial to obtain a stable striped state upon optimization. The relevance of our calculations for previous density-matrix renormalization group results and for the two-dimensional case is also discussed.
We present a functional renormalization group analysis of superconductivity in the ground state of the attractive Hubbard model on a square lattice. Spontaneous symmetry breaking is treated in a purely fermionic setting via anomalous propagators and anomalous effective interactions. In addition to the anomalous interactions arising already in the reduced BCS model, effective interactions with three incoming legs and one outgoing leg (and vice versa) occur. We accomplish their integration into the usual diagrammatic formalism by introducing a Nambu matrix for the effective interactions. From a random-phase approximation generalized through use of this matrix we conclude that the impact of the 3+1 effective interactions is limited, especially considering the effective interactions important for the determination of the order parameter. The exact hierarchy of flow equations for one-particle irreducible vertex functions is truncated on the two-particle level, with higher-order self-energy corrections included in a scheme proposed by Katanin. Using a parametrization of effective interactions by patches in momentum space, the flow equations can be integrated numerically to the lowest scales without encountering divergences. Momentum-shell as well as interaction-flow cutoff functions are used, including a small external field or a large external field and a counterterm, respectively. Both approaches produce momentum-resolved order parameter values directly from the microscopic model. The size of the superconducting gap is in reasonable agreement with expectations from other studies.
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.