No Arabic abstract
In this thesis we study the strongly-correlated-electron physics of the longstanding H-Tc-superconductivity problem using a non-perturbative method, the Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT), capable to go beyond standard perturbation-theory techniques. DMFT is by construction a local theory which neglects spatial correlation. Experiments have however shown that the latter is a fundamental property of cuprate materials. In a first step, we approach the problem of spatial correlation in the normal state of cuprate materials using a phenomenological Fermi-Liquid-Boltzmann model. We then introduce and develop in detail an extension to DMFT, the Cellular Dynamical Mean Field Theory (CDMFT), capable of considering short-ranged spatial correlation in a system, and we implement it using the exact diagonalization algorithm . After benchmarking CDMFT with the exact one-dimensional solution of the Hubbard Model, we employ it to study the density-driven Mott metal-insulator transition in the two-dimensional Hubbard Model, focusing in particular on the anomalous properties of the doped normal state close to the Mott insulator. We finally study the superconducting state. We show that within CDMFT the one-band Hubbard Model supports a d-wave superconductive state, which strongly departs from the standard BCS theory. We conjecture a link between the instabilities found in the normal state and the onset of superconductivity.
We propose a cellular version of dynamical-mean field theory which gives a natural generalization of its original single-site construction and is formulated in different sets of variables. We show how non-orthogonality of the tight-binding basis sets enters the problem and prove that the resulting equations lead to manifestly causal self energies.
We examine the cluster-size dependence of the cellular dynamical mean-field theory (CDMFT) applied to the two-dimensional Hubbard model. Employing the continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method as the solver for the effective cluster model, we obtain CDMFT solutions for 4-, 8-, 12-, and 16-site clusters at a low temperature. Comparing various periodization schemes, which are used to construct the infinite-lattice quantities from the cluster results, we find that the cumulant periodization yields the fastest convergence for the hole-doped Mott insulator where the most severe size dependence is expected. We also find that the convergence is much faster around (0,0) and (pi/2,pi/2) than around (pi,0) and (pi,pi). The cumulant-periodized self-energy seems to be close to its thermodynamic limit already for a 16-site cluster in the range of parameters studied. The 4-site results remarkably agree well with the 16-site results, indicating that the previous studies based on the 4-site cluster capture the essence of the physics of doped Mott insulators.
In this paper we present an accurate numerical scheme for extracting inter-atomic exchange parameters ($J_{ij}$) of strongly correlated systems, based on first-principles full-potential electronic structure theory. The electronic structure is modelled with the help of a full-potential linear muffin-tin orbital method. The effects of strong electron correlations are considered within the charge self-consistent density functional theory plus dynamical mean-field theory (DFT+DMFT). The exchange parameters are then extracted using the magnetic force theorem, hence all the calculations are performed within a single computational framework. The method allows to investigate how the $J_{ij}$-parameters are affected by dynamical electron correlations. In addition to describing the formalism and details of the implementation, we also present magnetic properties of a few commonly discussed systems, characterised by different degrees of electron localisation. In bcc Fe we found a minor renormalisation of the $J_{ij}$ interactions once the dynamical correlations are introduced. However, generally, if the magnetic coupling has several competing contributions from different orbitals, the redistribution of the spectral weight and changes in the exchange splitting of these states can lead to a dramatic modification of the total interaction parameter. In NiO we found that both static and dynamical mean-field results provide an adequate description of the exchange interactions, which is somewhat surprising given the fact that these two methods result in quite different electronic structures. By employing Hubbard-I approximation for the treatment of the $4f$ states in hcp Gd we reproduce the experimentally observed multiplet structure. The calculated exchange parameters result to be rather close to the ones obtained by treating the $4f$ electrons as non-interacting core states.
We introduce cluster-based mean-field, perturbation and coupled-cluster theories to describe the ground state of strongly-correlated spin systems. In cluster mean-field, the ground state wavefunction is written as a simple tensor product of optimized cluster states. The cluster-language and the mean-field nature of the ansatz allows for a straightforward improvement based on perturbation theory and coupled-cluster, to account for inter-cluster correlations. We present benchmark calculations on the 2D square $J_1-J_2$ Heisenberg model, using cluster mean-field, second-order perturbation theory and coupled-cluster. We also present an extrapolation scheme that allows us to compute thermodynamic limit energies very accurately. Our results indicate that, even with relatively small clusters, the correlated methods can provide an accurate description of the Heisenberg model in the regimes considered. Some ways to improve the results presented in this work are discussed.
It is well known that cellular dynamical mean-field theory (CDMFT) leads to the artificial breaking of translation invariance. In spite of this, it is one of the most successful methods to treat strongly correlated electrons systems. Here, we investigate in more detail how this broken translation invariance manifests itself. This allows to disentangle artificial broken translation invariance effects from the genuine strongly correlated effects captured by CDMFT. We report artificial density waves taking the shape of the cluster---cluster density waves---in all our zero temperature CDMFT solutions, including pair density waves in the superconducting state. We discuss the limitations of periodization regarding this phenomenon, and we present mean-field density-wave models that reproduce CDMFT results at low energy in the superconducting state. We then discuss how these artificial density waves help the agreement of CDMFT with high temperature superconducting cuprates regarding the low-energy spectrum, in particular for subgap structures observed in tunnelling microscopy. We relate these subgap structures to nodal and anti-nodal gaps in our results, similar to those observed in photoemission experiments. This fortuitous agreement suggests that spatial inhomogeneity may be a key ingredient to explain some features of the low-energy underdoped spectrum of cuprates with strongly correlated methods. This work deepens our understanding of CDMFT and clearly identifies signatures of broken translation invariance in the presence of strong correlations.