Very large anisotropies in transport quantities have been observed in the presence of very small in-plane structural anisotropy in many strongly correlated electron materials. By studying the two-dimensional Hubbard model with dynamical-mean-field theory for clusters, we show that such large anisotropies can be induced without static stripe order if the interaction is large enough to yield a Mott transition. Anisotropy decreases at large frequency. The maximum effect on conductivity anisotropy occurs in the underdoped regime, as observed in high temperature superconductors.
The nature of the hidden-order (HO) state in URu2Si2 remains one of the major unsolved issues in heavy-fermion physics. Recently, torque magnetometry, x-ray diffraction and elastoresistivity data have suggested that the HO phase transition at THO = 17.5 K is driven by electronic nematic effects. Here, we search for thermodynamic signatures of this purported structural instability using anisotropic thermal-expansion, Youngs modulus, elastoresistivity and specific-heat measurements. In contrast to the published results, we find no evidence of a rotational symmetry-breaking in any of our data. Interestingly, our elastoresistivity measurements, which are in full agreement with published results, exhibit a Curie-Weiss divergence, which we however attribute to a volume and not to a symmetry-breaking effect. Finally, clear evidence for thermal fluctuations is observed in our heat-capacity data, from which we estimate the HO correlation length.
While a specific kind of strange metal is increasingly found to be the normal states in a wide variety of unconventional superconductors, its microscopic origin is presently a hotly debated enigma. Using dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) based on hybridization expansion of continuous-time quantum Monte-Carlo (CTQMC) solver for an extended two-band Hubbard model (2BHM), we investigate the conditions underlying the emergence of such a metal. Specifically, we tie strange metallicity to an orbital-selective Mottness in 2BHM or momentum-selective Mott phase (OSMP) in 2D Hubbard models inspired by a cluster-to-orbital mapping. We find $(i)$ disparate spin and charge responses, $(ii)$ fractional power-law behavior and $omega/T$-scaling in the charge and spin fluctuation responses, and $(iii)$ very good accord with optical conductivity and nuclear magnetic relaxation rates in the slightly underdoped normal states of cuprates and Fe-arsenides. We analyze the local problem using bosonization to show that such anomalous responses arise from a lattice orthogonality catastrophe specifically in the OSMP. Our work establishes the intimate link between strange metallicity and selective Mottness in quantum matter.
Electronic nematic phases have been proposed to occur in various correlated electron systems and were recently claimed to have been detected in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) conductance maps of the pseudogap states of the cuprate high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x (Bi-2212). We investigate the influence of anisotropic STM tip structures on such measurements and establish, with a model calculation, the presence of a tunneling interference effect within an STM junction that induces energy-dependent symmetry-breaking features in the conductance maps. We experimentally confirm this phenomenon on different correlated electron systems, including measurements in the pseudogap state of Bi-2212, showing that the apparent nematic behavior of the imaged crystal lattice is likely not due to nematic order but is related to how a realistic STM tip probes the band structure of a material. We further establish that this interference effect can be used as a sensitive probe of changes in the momentum structure of the samples quasiparticles as a function of energy.
Electronic nematicity is an important order in most iron-based superconductors, and FeSe represents a unique example, in which nematicity disentangles from spin ordering. It is commonly perceived that this property arises from strong electronic correlation, which can not be properly captured by density functional theory (DFT). Here, we show that by properly considering the paramagnetic condition and carefully searching the energy landscape with symmetry-preconditioned wavefunctions, two nematic solutions stand out at either the DFT+$U$ or hybrid functional level, both of which are lower in energy than the symmetric solution. The ground-state band structure and Fermi surface can be well compared with the recent experimental results. Symmetry analysis assigns these two new solutions to the $B_{1g}$ and $E_u$ irreducible representations of the D$_{4h}$ point group. While the $B_{1g}$ Ising nematicity has been widely discussed in the context of vestigial stripe antiferromagnetic order, the two-component $E_u$ vector nematicity is beyond previous theoretical discussion. Distinct from the $B_{1g}$ order, the $E_u$ order features mixing of the Fe $d$-orbitals and inversion symmetry breaking, which lead to striking experimental consequences, e.g. missing of an electron pocket.
Nematicity is a well known property of liquid crystals and has been recently discussed in the context of strongly interacting electrons. An electronic nematic phase has been seen by many experiments in certain strongly correlated materials, in particular, in the pseudogap phase generic to many hole-doped cuprate superconductors. Recent measurements in high $T_c$ superconductors has shown even if the lattice is perfectly rotationally symmetric, the ground state can still have strongly nematic local properties. Our study of the two-dimensional Hubbard model provides strong support of the recent experimental results on local rotational $C_4$ symmetry breaking. The variational cluster approach is used here to show the possibility of an electronic nematic state and the proximity of the underlying symmetry-breaking ground state within the Hubbard model. We identify this nematic phase in the overdoped region and show that the local nematicity decreases with increasing electron filling. Our results also indicate that strong Coulomb interaction may drive the nematic phase into a phase similar to the stripe structure. The calculated spin (magnetic) correlation function in momentum space shows the effects resulting from real-space nematicity.