No Arabic abstract
We study the ground state properties of the Hubbard model on three-leg triangular cylinders using large-scale density-matrix renormalization group simulations. At half-filling, we identify an intermediate gapless spin liquid phase between a metallic phase at weak coupling and Mott insulating dimer phase at strong interaction, which has one gapless spin mode and algebraic spin-spin correlations but exponential decay scalar chiral-chiral correlations. Upon light doping the gapless spin liquid, the system exhibits power-law charge-density-wave (CDW) correlations but short-range single-particle, spin-spin, and chiral-chiral correlations. Similar to CDW correlations, the superconducting correlations are also quasi-long-ranged but oscillate in sign as a function of distance, which is consistent with the striped pair-density wave. When further doping the gapless spin liquid phase or doping the dimer order phase, another phase takes over, which has similar CDW correlations but all other correlations decay exponentially.
The existence of a gapped chiral spin liquid has been recently suggested in the vicinity of the metal-insulator transition of the Hubbard model on the triangular lattice, by intensive density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulations [A. Szasz, J. Motruk, M.P. Zaletel, and J.E. Moore, Phys. Rev. X ${bf 10}$, 021042 (2020)]. Here, we report the results obtained within the variational Monte Carlo technique based upon Jastrow-Slater wave functions, implemented with backflow correlations. As in DMRG calculations, we consider $N$-leg cylinders. In highly-frustrated cases, i.e., in the presence of a next-nearest neighbor hopping with $N=4$, a chiral spin liquid emerges between the metal and the insulator with magnetic quasi-long-range order. Within our approach, the chiral state is gapped and breaks the reflection symmetry. By contrast, for the less frustrated case with $N=6$, the chiral spin liquid is not the state with the lowest variational energy and the results are very similar to the one obtained on two-dimensional clusters [L.F. Tocchio, A. Montorsi, and F. Becca, Phys. Rev. B ${bf 102}$, 115150 (2020)].
We calculate the fermionic spectral function $A_k (omega)$ in the spiral spin-density-wave (SDW) state of the Hubbard model on a quasi-2D triangular lattice at small but finite temperature $T$. The spiral SDW order $Delta (T)$ develops below $T = T_N$ and has momentum ${ bf K} = (4pi/3,0)$. We pay special attention to fermions with momenta ${bf k}$, for which ${bf k}$ and ${bf k} + {bf K}$ are close to Fermi surface in the absence of SDW. At the mean field level, $A_k (omega)$ for such fermions has peaks at $omega = pm Delta (T)$ at $T < T_N$ and displays a conventional Fermi liquid behavior at $T > T_N$. We show that this behavior changes qualitatively beyond mean-field due to singular self-energy contributions from thermal fluctuations in a quasi-2D system. We use a non-perturbative eikonal approach and sum up infinite series of thermal self-energy terms. We show that $A_k (omega)$ shows peak/dip/hump features at $T < T_N$, with the peak position at $Delta (T)$ and hump position at $Delta (T=0)$. Above $T_N$, the hump survives up to $T = T_p > T_N$, and in between $T_N$ and $T_p$ the spectral function displays the pseudogap behavior. We show that the difference between $T_p$ and $T_N$ is controlled by the ratio of in-plane and out-of-plane static spin susceptibilities, which determines the combinatoric factors in the diagrammatic series for the self-energy. For certain values of this ratio, $T_p = T_N$, i.e., the pseudogap region collapses. In this last case, thermal fluctuations are logarithmically singular, yet they do not give rise to pseudogap behavior. Our computational method can be used to study pseudogap physics due to thermal fluctuations in other systems.
We numerically study the Heisenberg models on triangular lattices by extending it from the simplest equilateral lattice with only the nearest-neighbor exchange interaction. We show that, by including an additional weak next-nearest-neighbor interaction, a quantum spin-liquid phase is stabilized against the antiferromagnetic order. The spin gap (triplet excitation gap) and spin correlation at long distances decay algebraically with increasing system size at the critical point between the antiferromagnetic phase and the spin-liquid phase. This algebraic behavior continues in the spin-liquid phase as well, indicating the presence of an unconventional critical (algebraic spin-liquid) phase characterized by the dynamical and anomalous critical exponents $z+etasim1$. Unusually small triplet and singlet excitation energies found in extended points of the Brillouin zone impose constraints on this algebraic spin liquid.
We study the effects of doping the Kitaev model on the honeycomb lattice where the spins interact via the bond-directional interaction $J_K$, which is known to have a quantum spin liquid as its exact ground state. The effect of hole doping is studied within the $t$-$J_K$ model on a three-leg cylinder using density-matrix renormalization group. Upon light doping, we find that the ground state of the system has quasi-long-range charge-density-wave correlations but short-range single-particle correlations. The dominant pairing channel is the even-parity superconducting pair-pair correlations with $d$-wave-like symmetry, which oscillate in sign as a function of separation with a period equal to that of the spin-density wave and two times the charge-density wave. Although these correlations fall rapidly (possibly exponentially) at long distances, this is never-the-less the first example where a pair-density wave is the strongest SC order on a bipartite lattice. Our results may be relevant to ${rm Na_2IrO_3}$ and $alpha$-${rm RuCl_3}$ upon doping.
The Hubbard model and its strong-coupling version, the Heisenberg one, have been widely studied on the triangular lattice to capture the essential low-temperature properties of different materials. One example is given by transition metal dichalcogenides, as 1T$-$TaS$_2$, where a large unit cell with $13$ Ta atom forms weakly-coupled layers with an isotropic triangular lattice. By using accurate variational Monte Carlo calculations, we report the phase diagram of the $t-t^prime$ Hubbard model on the triangular lattice, highlighting the differences between positive and negative values of $t^prime/t$; this result can be captured only by including the charge fluctuations that are always present for a finite electron-electron repulsion. Two spin-liquid regions are detected: one for $t^prime/t<0$, which persists down to intermediate values of the electron-electron repulsion, and a narrower one for $t^prime/t>0$. The spin-liquid phase appears to be gapless, though the variational wave function has a nematic character, in contrast to the Heisenberg limit. We do not find any evidence for non-magnetic Mott phases in the proximity of the metal-insulator transition, at variance with the predictions (mainly based upon strong-coupling expansions in $t/U$) that suggest the existence of a weak-Mott phase that intrudes between the metal and the magnetically ordered insulator.