In the 35 years since the discovery of cuprate superconductors, we have not yet reached a unified understanding of their properties, including their material dependence of the superconducting transition temperature $T_{text{c}}$. The preceding theore
tical and experimental studies have provided an overall picture of the phase diagram, and some important parameters for the $T_{text{c}}$, such as the contribution of the Cu $d_{z^2}$ orbital to the Fermi surface and the site-energy difference $Delta_{dp}$ between the Cu $d_{x^2-y^2}$ and O $p$ orbitals. However, they are somewhat empirical and limited in scope, always including exceptions, and do not provide a comprehensive view of the series of cuprates. Here we propose a four-band $d$-$p$ model as a minimal model to study material dependence in cuprates. Using the variational Monte Carlo method, we theoretically investigate the phase diagram for the La$_2$CuO$_4$ and HgBa$_2$CuO$_4$ systems and the correlation between the key parameters and the superconductivity. Our results comprehensively account for the empirical correlation between $T_{text{c}}$ and model parameters, and thus can provide a guideline for new material design. We also show that the effect of the nearest-neighbor $d$-$d$ Coulomb interaction $V_{dd}$ is actually quite important for the stability of superconductivity and phase competition.
Motivated by recent progress of quantum technologies, we study a discretized quantum adiabatic process for a one-dimensional free fermion system described by a variational wave function, i.e., a parametrized quantum circuit. The wave function is comp
osed of $M$ layers of two elementary sets of time-evolution operators, each set being decomposed into commutable local operators. The evolution time of each time-evolution operator is treated as a variational parameter so as to minimize the expectation value of the energy. We show that the exact ground state is reached by applying the layers of time-evolution operators as many as a quarter of the system size. This is the minimum number $M_B$ of layers set by the limit of speed, i.e., the Lieb-Robinson bound, for propagating quantum entanglement via the local time-evolution operators. Quantities such as the energy $E$ and the entanglement entropy $S$ of the optimized variational wave function with $M < M_B$ are independent of the system size $L$ but fall into some universal functions of $M$. The development of the entanglement in these ansatz is further manifested in the progressive propagation of single-particle orbitals in the variational wave function. We also find that the optimized variational parameters show a systematic structure that provides the optimum scheduling function in the quantum adiabatic process. We also investigate the imaginary-time evolution of this variational wave function, where the causality relation is absent due to the non-unitarity of the imaginary-time evolution operators, thus the norm of the wave function being no longer conserved. We find that the convergence to the exact ground state is exponentially fast, despite that the system is at the critical point, suggesting that implementation of the non-unitary imaginary-time evolution in a quantum circuit is highly promising to further shallow the circuit depth.
Motivated by the magnetic phase transition of a proximate Kitaev system $alpha$-RuCl$_3$ in the presence of a magnetic field, we study the simplest but essential quantum spin model with the ferromagnetic nearest neighboring (NN) Kitaev interaction an
d additional antiferromagnetic third NN Heisenberg interaction. Employing both exact diagonalization and density matrix renormalization group methods, we demonstrate that the model shows the magnetic phase transition from the zigzag order phase to the spin polarized phase through an intermediate phase in both cases when an in-plane magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the NN bond direction and when an out-of-plane field is applied, in good agreement with experimental observations. Furthermore, we verify that additional symmetric off-diagonal $Gamma$ interaction and ferromagnetic Heisenberg interaction between NN spins can both suppress the intermediate phase with the in-plane field. Our result gives important clues on determining relevant interactions in the field-induced magnetic phase transition of proximate Kiteav systems.
The previous theoretical study has shown that pulse irradiation to the Mott insulating state in the Hubbard model can induce the enhancement of superconducting correlation due to the generation of $eta$ pairs. Here, we show that the same mechanism ca
n be applied to the Kondo lattice model, an effective model for heavy electron systems, by demonstrating that the pulse irradiation indeed enhances the $eta$-pairing correlation. As in the case of the Hubbard model, the non-linear optical process is essential to increase the number of photoinduced $eta$ pairs and thus the enhancement of the superconducting correlation. We also find the diffusive behavior of the spin dynamics after the pulse irradiation, suggesting that the increase of the number of $eta$ pairs leads to the decoupling between the conduction band and the localized spins in the Kondo lattice model, which is inseparably related to the photodoping effect.
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 $eta$-pairin
g 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.
We employ matrix-product state techniques to numerically study the zero-temperature spin transport in a finite spin-1/2 XXZ chain coupled to fermionic leads with a spin bias voltage. Current-voltage characteristics are calculated for parameters corre
sponding to the gapless XY phase and the gapped Neel phase. In both cases, the low-bias spin current is strongly suppressed unless the parameters of the model are fine-tuned. For the XY phase, this corresponds to a conducting fixed point where the conductance agrees with the Luttinger-liquid prediction. In the Neel phase, fine-tuning the parameters similarly leads to an unsuppressed spin current with a linear current-voltage characteristic at low bias voltages. However, with increasing the bias voltage, there occurs a sharp crossover to a region where a current-voltage characteristic is no longer linear and the smaller differential conductance is observed. We furthermore show that the parameters maximizing the spin current minimize the Friedel oscillations at the interface, in agreement with the previous analyses of the charge current for inhomogeneous Hubbard and spinless fermion chains.
Unrevealing local magnetic and electronic correlations in the vicinity of charge carriers is crucial in order to understand rich physical properties in correlated electron systems. Here, using high-energy optical conductivity (up to 35 eV) as a funct
ion of temperature and polarization, we observe a surprisingly strong spin polarization of the local spin singlet with enhanced ferromagnetic correlations between Cu spins near the doped holes in lightly hole-doped La$_{1.95}$Sr$_{0.05}$Cu$_{0.95}$Zn$_{0.05}$O$_{4}$. The changes of the local spin polarization manifest strongly in the temperature-dependent optical conductivity at ~7.2 eV, with an anomaly at the magnetic stripe phase (~25 K), accompanied by anomalous spectral-weight transfer in a broad energy range. Supported by theoretical calculations, we also assign high-energy optical transitions and their corresponding temperature dependence, particularly at ~2.5 ~8.7, ~9.7, ~11.3 and ~21.8 eV. Our result shows the importance of a strong mixture of spin singlet and triplet states in hole-doped cuprates and demonstrates a new strategy to probe local magnetic correlations using high- energy optical conductivity in correlated electron systems.
Two-dimensional density-matrix renormalization group method is employed to examine the ground state phase diagram of the Hubbard model on the triangular lattice at half filling. The calculation reveals two discontinuities in the double occupancy with
increasing the repulsive Hubbard interaction U at Uc1 = 7.55 t and Uc2 = 9.65 t (t being the hopping integral), indicating that there are three phases separated by first order transitions. The absence of any singularity in physical quantities for 0 < U < Uc1 implies that this phase corresponds to a metallic phase. The local spin density induced by an applied pinning magnetic field for U > Uc2 exhibits a three sublattice feature, which is compatible with the Neel ordered state realized in the strong coupling limit. For Uc1 < U < Uc2, a response to the applied pinning magnetic field is comparable to that in the metallic phase but a relatively large spin correlation length is found with neither valence bond nor chiral magnetic order, suggesting a paramagnetic nature which resembles gapless spin liquid. The calculation also finds that the pair- ing correlation function monotonically decreases with increasing U and thus the superconductivity is unlikely in the intermediate phase.
The density matrix renormalization group method is applied to obtain the ground state phase diagram of the single impurity Anderson model on the honeycomb lattice at half filling. The calculation of local static quantities shows that the phase diagra
m contains two distinct phases, the local moment (LM) phase and the asymmetric strong coupling (ASC) phase. These results are supported by the local spin and charge excitation spectra, which exhibit qualitatively different behavior in these two phases and also reveal the existence of the valence fluctuating point at the phase boundary. For comparison, we also study the low-energy effective pseudogap Anderson model. Although the high-energy excitations are obviously different, we find that the ground state phase diagram and the asymptotically low-energy excitations are in good quantitative agreement with those for the single impurity Anderson model on the honeycomb lattice, thus providing the first quantitative justification for the previous studies based on low-energy approximate approaches. Furthermore, we find that the lowest entanglement level is doubly degenerate for the LM phase, whereas it is singlet for the ASC phase and is accidentally three fold degenerate at the valence fluctuating point. Our results therefore clearly demonstrate that the low-lying entanglement spectrum can be used to determine with high accuracy the phase boundary of the impurity quantum phase transition.
We introduce a block Lanczos (BL) recursive technique to construct quasi-one-dimensional models, suitable for density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations, from single- as well as multiple-impurity Anderson models in any spatial dimension
s. This new scheme, named BL-DMRG method, allows us to calculate not only local but also spatially dependent static and dynamical quantities of the ground state for general Anderson impurity models without losing elaborate geometrical information of the lattice. We show that the BL-DMRG method can be easily extended to treat a multi-orbital Anderson impurity model. We also show that the symmetry adapted BL bases can be utilized, when it is appropriate, to reduce the computational cost. As a demonstration, we apply the BL-DMRG method to three different models for graphene: (i) a single adatom on the honeycomb lattice, (ii) a substitutional impurity in the honeycomb lattice, and (iii) an effective model for a single carbon vacancy in graphene. Our analysis reveals that, for the particle-hole symmetric case at half filling of electron density, the ground state of model (i) behaves as an isolated magnetic impurity with no Kondo screening while the ground state of the other two models forms a spin singlet state. We also calculate the real-space dependence of the spin-spin correlation functions between the impurity site and the conduction sites for these three models. Our results clearly show that, reflecting the presence of absence of unscreened magnetic moment at the impurity site, the spin-spin correlation functions decay as $r^{-3}$, differently from the non-interacting limit ($r^{-2}$), for model (i) and as $ r^{-4}$, exactly the same as the non-interacting limit, for models (ii) and (iii) in the asymptotic $r$, where $r$ is the distance between the impurity site and the conduction site.
