arXiv subjects

A. -M. S. Tremblay

Publications and source records attributed to A. -M. S. Tremblay.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Intrinsic Cluster-Shaped Density Waves in Cellular Dynamical Mean-Field Theory

It is well known that cellular dynamical mean-field theory (CDMFT) leads to the artificial breaking of translation invariance. In spite of this, it is one of the most successful methods to treat strongly correlated electrons systems. Here, we investigate in more detail how this broken translation invariance manifests itself. This allows to disentangle artificial broken translation invariance effects from the genuine strongly correlated effects captured by CDMFT. We report artificial density waves taking the shape of the cluster---cluster density waves---in all our zero temperature CDMFT solutions, including pair density waves in the superconducting state. We discuss the limitations of periodization regarding this phenomenon, and we present mean-field density-wave models that reproduce CDMFT results at low energy in the superconducting state. We then discuss how these artificial density waves help the agreement of CDMFT with high temperature superconducting cuprates regarding the low-energy spectrum, in particular for subgap structures observed in tunnelling microscopy. We relate these subgap structures to nodal and anti-nodal gaps in our results, similar to those observed in photoemission experiments. This fortuitous agreement suggests that spatial inhomogeneity may be a key ingredient to explain some features of the low-energy underdoped spectrum of cuprates with strongly correlated methods. This work deepens our understanding of CDMFT and clearly identifies signatures of broken translation invariance in the presence of strong correlations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Pseudogap, van Hove Singularity, Maximum in Entropy and Specific Heat for Hole-Doped Mott Insulators

The first indication of a pseudogap in cuprates came from a sudden decrease of NMR Knight shift at a doping-dependent temperature $T^*(δ)$. Since then, experiments have found phase transitions at a lower $T^*_\text{phase}(δ)$. Using plaquette cellular dynamical mean-field for the square-lattice Hubbard model at high temperature, where the results are reliable, we show that $T^*(δ)$ shares many features of $T^*_\text{phase}(δ)$. The remarkable agreement with several experiments, including quantum critical behavior of the electronic specific heat, supports the view that the pseudogap is controlled by a finite-doping extension of the Mott transition. We propose further experimental tests.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Superfluid stiffness in cuprates: Effect of Mott transition and phase competition

Superfluid stiffness $ρ_s$ is a defining characteristic of the superconducting state, allowing phase coherence and supercurrent. It is accessible experimentally through the penetration depth. Coexistence of $d$-wave superconductivity with other phases in underdoped cuprates, such as antiferromagnetism (AF) or charge-density waves (CDW), may drastically alter $ρ_s$. To shed light on this physics, the zero-temperature value of $ρ_s=ρ_{zz}$ along the $c$-axis was computed for different values of Hubbard interaction $U$ and different sets of tight-binding parameters describing the high-temperature superconductors YBCO and NCCO. We used Cellular Dynamical Mean-Field Theory for the one-band Hubbard model with exact diagonalization as impurity solver and state-of-the-art bath parametrization. We conclude that Mott physics plays a dominant role in determining the superfluid stiffness on the hole-doped side of the phase diagram. On the electron-doped side, antiferromagnetism wins over superconductivity near half-filling. But upon approaching optimal electron-doping, homogeneous coexistence between superconductivity and antiferromagnetism causes the superfluid stiffness to drop sharply. Hence, on the electron-doped side, it is competition between antiferromagnetism and $d$-wave superconductivity that plays a dominant role in determining the value of $ρ_{zz}$ near half-filling. At large overdoping, $ρ_{zz}$ behaves in a more BCS-like manner in both the electron- and hole-doped cases. We comment on some qualitative implications of these results for the superconducting transition temperature.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Specific heat maximum as a signature of Mott physics in the two-dimensional Hubbard model

Recent experiments on cuprates show that as a function of doping, the normal-state specific heat sharply peaks at the doping $δ^*$, where the pseudogap ends at low temperature. This finding is taken as the thermodynamic signature of a quantum critical point, whose nature has not yet been identified. Here we present calculations for the two-dimensional Hubbard model in the doped Mott insulator regime, which indicate that the specific heat anomaly can arise from the finite temperature critical endpoint of a first-order transition between a pseudogap phase with dominant singlet correlations and a metal. As a function of doping at the temperature of the endpoint, the specific heat diverges. Upon increasing temperature, the peak becomes broader. The diverging correlation length is associated with uniform density fluctuations. No broken symmetries are needed. These anomalies also occur at half-filling as a function of interaction strength, and are relevant for organic superconductors and ultracold atoms.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Coexistence of Superconductivity and Antiferromagnetism in the Hubbard model for cuprates

Antiferromagnetism and $d$-wave superconductivity are the most important competing ground-state phases of cuprate superconductors. Using cellular dynamical mean-field theory (CDMFT) for the Hubbard model, we revisit the question of the coexistence and competition of these phases in the one-band Hubbard model with realistic band parameters and interaction strengths. With an exact diagonalization solver, we improve on previous works with a more complete bath parametrization which is carefully chosen to grant the maximal possible freedom to the hybridization function for a given number of bath orbitals. Compared with previous incomplete parametrizations, this general bath parametrization shows that the range of microscopic coexistence of superconductivity and antiferromagnetism is reduced for band parameters for NCCO, and confined to electron-doping with parameters relevant for YBCO.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Critical Opalescence across the Doping Driven Mott Transition in Optical Lattices of Ultracold Atoms

Phase transitions and their associated crossovers are imprinted in the behavior of fluctuations. Motivated by recent experiments on ultracold atoms in optical lattices, we compute the thermodynamic density fluctuations $δN^2$ of the two-dimensional fermionic Hubbard model with plaquette cellular dynamical mean-field theory. To understand the length scale of these fluctuations, we separate the local from the nonlocal contributions to $δN^2$. We determine the effects of particle statistics, interaction strength $U$, temperature $T$ and density $n$. At high temperature, our theoretical framework reproduces the experimental observations in the doping-driven crossover regime between metal and Mott insulator. At low temperature, there is an increase of thermodynamic density fluctuations, analog to critical opalescence, accompanied by a surprising reduction of the absolute value of their nonlocal contributions. This is a precursory sign of an underlying phase transition between a pseudogap phase and a metallic phase in doped Mott insulators, which should play an important role in the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. Predictions for ultracold atom experiments are made.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Orbital magnetization and anomalous Hall effect in interacting Weyl semimetals

Ferromagnetic Weyl semi-metals exhibit an anomalous Hall effect, a consequence of their topological properties. In the non-interacting case, the derivative of the orbital magnetization with respect to chemical potential is proportional to this anomalous Hall effect, the Str$\check{\text{e}}$da formula. Motivated by compounds such as $\text{Mn}_3\text{Sn}$, here we investigate how interactions modeled by a Hubbard $U$ impact on both quantities when the Fermi energy is either aligned with the Weyl nodes or away from them. Within Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, we find, in the Weyl semimetal regime, away from interaction-induced Mott or band-insulating phases, that interactions lead not only to spectral weight redistribution between coherent bands and Hubbard bands, but also to an increase in the imbalance between the densities of spin species. This increased imbalance leads to a larger anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnetic Weyl semimetals. But this interaction-induced spin imbalance also compensates the reduction in orbital magnetization of each spin species that comes from smaller quasiparticle weight. The combined effects lead to an orbital magnetization that depends weakly on interaction strength and changes linearly upon doping at small doping. The Str$\check{\text{e}}$da formula is no-longer satisfied. Away from the insulating phases, the quasiparticle picture and low-order perturbation theory go a long way to explain these results.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Electronic and Magnetic Properties of double-perovskites La$_2$MnRuO$_6$ and Hole-Doped La$_2$MnFeO$_6$ and their Potential for Magnetic Refrigeration

Magnetic refrigeration at room-temperature is a technology that could potentially be more environmentally-friendly, efficient and affordable than traditional refrigeration. The search for suitable materials for magnetocaloric refrigeration led to the study of double-perovskites La$_2$MnNiO$_6$, La$_2$MnCoO$_6$ and La$_2$MnFeO$_6$. While La$_2$MnNiO$_6$ and La$_2$MnCoO$_6$ are ferromagnets with near room-temperature $T_C$s, previous theoretical study of double-perovskite La$_2$MnFeO$_6$ revealed that this material is a ferrimagnet due to strong electronic interactions in Fe-$d$ orbitals. Here, we investigate the double-perovskites La$_2$MnRuO$_6$ and LaA''MnFeO$_6$ (A'' = Ba, Ca and Sr) with density functional theory (DFT) as materials that can counteract the effects the strong repulsion present in the in Fe-$d$ shells of La$_2$MnFeO$_6$ and lead to a ferromagnetic state. Our study reaveals that while La$_2$MnRuO$_6$ is also a ferrimagnet, but with a higher net magnetic moment per formula than La$_2$MnFeO$_6$, doubly-ordered LaA''MnFeO$_6$ are ferromagnets. By mapping the total energy of the LaA''MnFeO$_6$ compounds obtained from DFT calculations to the Ising model, we also calculate their magnetic exchange couplings. This allows us to estimate the trend in $T_C$ of the three doped La$_2$MnFeO$_6$ materials with classical Monte-Carlo calculations and predict that doubly-ordered LaBaMnFeO$_6$ and LaSrMnFeO$_6$ could be suitable materials for room-temperature magnetic refrigeration.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Bad metallic transport in a cold atom Fermi-Hubbard system

Charge transport is a revealing probe of the quantum properties of materials. Strong interactions can blur charge carriers resulting in a poorly understood "quantum soup". Here we study the conductivity of the Fermi-Hubbard model, a testing ground for strong interaction physics, in a clean quantum system - ultracold $^6$Li in a 2D optical lattice. We determine the charge diffusion constant in our system by measuring the relaxation of an imposed density modulation and modeling its decay hydrodynamically. The diffusion constant is converted to a resistivity, which exhibits a linear temperature dependence and exceeds the Mott-Ioffe-Regel limit, two characteristic signatures of a bad metal. The techniques we develop here may be applied to measurements of other transport quantities, including the optical conductivity and thermopower.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2018

Electronic and Magnetic Properties of the Candidate Magnetocaloric-Material Double Perovskites La$_2$MnCoO$_6$, La$_2$MnNiO$_6$ and La$_2$MnFeO$_6$

The search for room-temperature magnetocaloric materials for refrigeration has led to investigations of double perovskites. In particular, a puzzle has appeared in the La$_2$MnNiO$_6$, La$_2$MnCoO$_6$ and La$_2$MnFeO$_6$ family of compounds. They share the same crystal structure, but while La$_2$MnNiO$_6$ and La$_2$MnCoO$_6$ are ferromagnets below room temperature, La$_2$MnFeO$_6$, contrary to simple expectations, is a ferrimagnet. To solve this puzzle, we use density-functional theory calculations to investigate the electronic structure and magnetic exchange interactions of the ordered double perovskites. Our study reveals the critical role played by local electron-electron interaction in the Fe-$d$ orbital to promote the Fe$^{3+}$ valence state with half-filled $d$-shell over Fe$^{2+}$ and to establish a ferrimagnetic ground state for La$_2$MnFeO$_6$. The importance of Hund's coupling and Jahn-Teller distortion on the Mn$^{4+}$ ion is also pointed out. Exchange constants are extracted by comparing different magnetically ordered states. Mean-field and classical Monte-Carlo calculations on the resulting model give trends in $T_C$ that are in agreement with experiments on this family of materials.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Thermodynamic and information-theoretic description of the Mott transition in the two-dimensional Hubbard model

At the Mott transition, electron-electron interaction changes a metal, in which electrons are itinerant, to an insulator, in which electrons are localized. This phenomenon is central to quantum materials. Here we contribute to its understanding by studying the two-dimensional Hubbard model at finite temperature with plaquette cellular dynamical mean-field theory. We provide an exhaustive thermodynamic description of the correlation-driven Mott transition of the half-filled model by calculating pressure, charge compressibility, entropy, kinetic energy, potential energy and free energy across the first-order Mott transition and its high-temperature crossover (Widom line). The entropy is extracted from the Gibbs-Duhem relation and shows complex behavior near the transition, marked by discontinuous jumps at the first-order boundary, singular behavior at the Mott endpoint and inflections marking sharp variations in the supercritical region. The free energy allows us to identify the thermodynamic phase boundary, to discuss phases stability and metastability, and to touch upon nucleation and spinodal decomposition mechanisms for the transition. We complement this thermodynamic description of the Mott transition by an information-theoretic description. We achieve this by calculating the local entropy, which is a measure of entanglement, and the single-site total mutual information, which quantifies quantum and classical correlations. These information-theoretic measures exhibit characteristic behaviors that allow us to identify the first-order coexistence regions, the Mott critical endpoint and the crossovers along the Widom line in the supercritical region.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Entanglement entropy and mutual information across the Mott transition in the two-dimensional Hubbard model

Entanglement and information are powerful lenses to probe phases transitions in many-body systems. Motivated by recent cold atom experiments, which are now able to measure the corresponding information-theoretic quantities, we study the Mott transition in the half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model using cellular dynamical mean-field theory, and focus on two key measures of quantum correlations: entanglement entropy and mutual information. We show that they detect the first-order nature of the transition, the universality class of the endpoint, and the crossover emanating from the endpoint.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Hall effect in cuprates with incommensurate spin-density wave

The presence of incommensurate spiral spin-density waves (SDW) has been proposed to explain the $p$ (hole doping) to $1+p$ jump measured in the Hall number $n_H$ at a doping $p^*$. Here we explore {\it collinear} incommensurate SDW as another possible explanation of this phenomenon, distinct from the incommensurate {\it spiral} SDW proposal. We examine the effect of different SDW strengths and wavevectors and we find that the $n_H\sim p$ behavior is hardly reproduced at low doping. The calculated $n_H$ and Fermi surfaces give characteristic features that should be observed, thus the lack of these features in experiment suggests that the incommensurate collinear SDW is unlikely to be a good candidate to explain the $n_H\sim p$ observed in the pseudogap regime.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Orbital Effect of the Magnetic Field in Dynamical Mean-Field Theory

The availability of large magnetic fields at international facilities and of simulated magnetic fields that can reach the flux-quantum-per-unit-area level in cold atoms, calls for systematic studies of orbital effects of the magnetic field on the self-energy of interacting systems. Here we demonstrate theoretically that orbital effects of magnetic fields can be treated within single-site dynamical mean-field theory with a translationally invariant quantum impurity problem. As an example, we study the one-band Hubbard model on the square lattice using iterated perturbation theory as an impurity solver. We recover the expected quantum oscillations in the scattering rate and we show that the magnetic fields allow the interaction-induced effective mass to be measured through the single-particle density of states accessible in tunneling experiments. The orbital effect of magnetic fields on scattering becomes particularly important in the Hofstadter butterfly regime.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Effect of nonsymmorphic space group on correlation functions in iron-based superconductors

The orbital basis is natural when one needs to calculate the effect of local interactions or to unravel the role of orbital physics in the response to external probes. In systems with nonsymmorphic point groups, such as the iron-based superconductors, we show that symmetries that emerge in observable response functions at certain wave vectors are absent from generalized susceptibilities calculated with tight-binding Hamiltonians in the orbital basis. Such symmetries are recovered only when the generalized susceptibilities are embeded back to the continuum using appropriate matrix elements between basis states. This is illustrated with the case of LiFeAs and is further clarified using a minimal tight-binding Hamiltonian with non-symmorphic space group.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2017

Phenomenological theories of the low-temperature pseudogap: Hall number, specific heat and Seebeck coefficient

Since its experimental discovery, many phenomenological theories successfully reproduced the rapid rise from $p$ to $1+p$ found in the Hall number $n_H$ at the critical doping $p^*$ of the pseudogap in superconducting cuprates. Further comparison with experiments is now needed in order to narrow down candidates. In this paper, we consider three previously successful phenomenological theories in a unified formalism---an antiferromagnetic mean field (AF), a spiral incommensurate antiferromagnetic mean field (sAF), and the Yang-Rice-Zhang (YRZ) theory. We find a rapid rise in the specific heat and a rapid drop in the Seebeck coefficient for increasing doping across the transition in each of those models. The predicted rises and drops are locked, not to~$p^*$, but to the doping where anti-nodal electron pockets, characteristic of each model, appear at the Fermi surface shortly before~$p^*$. While such electron pockets are still to be found in experiments, we discuss how they could provide distinctive signatures for each model. We also show that the range of doping where those electron pockets would be found is strongly affected by the position of the van~Hove singularity.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Effects of interaction strength, doping, and frustration on the antiferromagnetic phase of the two-dimensional Hubbard model

Recent quantum-gas microscopy of ultracold atoms and scanning tunneling microscopy of the cuprates reveal new detailed information about doped Mott antiferromagnets, which can be compared with calculations. Using cellular dynamical mean-field theory, we map out the antiferromagnetic (AF) phase of the two-dimensional Hubbard model as a function of interaction strength $U$, hole doping $δ$ and temperature $T$. The Néel phase boundary is non-monotonic as a function of $U$ and $δ$. Frustration induced by second-neighbor hopping reduces Néel order more effectively at small $U$. The doped AF is stabilized at large $U$ by kinetic energy and at small $U$ by potential energy. The transition between the AF insulator and the doped metallic AF is continuous. At large $U$, we find in-gap states similar to those observed in scanning tunneling microscopy. We predict that, contrary to the Hubbard bands, these states are only slightly spin polarized.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Signatures of the Mott transition in the antiferromagnetic state of the two-dimensional Hubbard model

The properties of a phase with large correlation length can be strongly influenced by the underlying normal phase. We illustrate this by studying the half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model using cellular dynamical mean-field theory with continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo. Sharp crossovers in the mechanism that favors antiferromagnetic correlations and in the corresponding local density of states are observed. These crossovers occur at values of the interaction strength $U$ and temperature $T$ that are controlled by the underlying normal-state Mott transition.

cond-mat.str-el↗