Pseudogap in a Fermi-Hubbard quantum simulator

Abstract

Understanding doped Mott insulators is a fundamental goal in condensed matter physics, with relevance to cuprate superconductors and other quantum materials. The doped Hubbard model minimally describes such systems, and has explicated some of their complex behavior. However, many open questions remain concerning the anomalous metallic states which emerge at low temperatures and intermediate doping and which, in cuprates, give rise to high-temperature superconductivity upon cooling. Here we observe a crossover between a normal metal and a pseudogapped metal in the Hubbard model by performing thermodynamic and spectroscopic measurements in a cold atom quantum simulator, leveraging a recent several-fold reduction in experimentally achievable temperatures. Measurements of the compressibility show a maximum versus doping that develops upon cooling, signaling an inflection point in the equation of state. We track this maximum versus interaction strength, revealing a line of thermodynamic anomalies in the phase diagram that separates an underdoped from an overdoped metal at large interactions. Lattice modulation spectroscopy shows a loss of spectral weight at low energies in the underdoped regime which is non-uniform in the Brillouin zone, indicating the formation of a pseudogap. We use this signal to establish a pseudogap phase diagram as a function of interactions and doping. Our results experimentally demonstrate the existence of a pseudogapped metal in the Hubbard model, partially characterize the pseudogap regime, and suggest a link between the pseudogap and charge order which can be probed in future work. Furthermore, this work demonstrates the utility of quantum simulation in addressing frontier problems in correlated electron physics.