Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of thermodynamic properties of attractive SU($3$) Dirac fermions

Abstract

We employ the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method to study the finite-temperature properties of the half-filled attractive SU($3$) Hubbard model on a honeycomb lattice. We calculate the phase diagram in which the phase boundary separates the disordered phase and the charge-density-wave (CDW) phase and the transition temperature $T_{\text{tr}}(|U|)$ varies non-monotonically with attractive Hubbard interaction $|U|$. As the Hubbard $|U|$ increases at constant temperature $T<\text{max}(T_{\text{tr}}(|U|))$, the system first undergoes a transition from thermal Dirac semimetal phase to CDW phase, and eventually the CDW state is thermally melted at a strong Hubbard $|U|$ where the system enters a trion liquid phase. In between the two transition points the non-monotonic $|U|$ dependence of CDW order strength is strikingly different from the zero-temperature monotonic behavior. In the trion CDW state where off-site trions arise from quantum fluctuations (a fermion inside an on-site trion hops to a nearest-neighbor site), the simulated triple occupancy at constant Hubbard $|U|$ surprisingly increases with temperature, implying that the formation of off-site trions is suppressed by the thermal delocalization of on-site trions. We have also calculated the entropy-temperature relations for various attractive Hubbrad interactions, which exhibit the prominent characteristic of the Pomeranchuk effect. Our work has revealed that the formation of on-site and off-site trions has significant consequences for thermodynamic properties of SU(3) Dirac fermions.