arXiv subjects

F. F. Assaad

Publications and source records attributed to F. F. Assaad.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Correlation Effects in Quantum Spin-Hall Insulators: A Quantum Monte Carlo Study

We consider the Kane-Mele model with spin-orbit coupling supplemented by a Hubbard U term. On the basis of projective auxiliary field quantum Monte Carlo simulations on lattice sizes up to 15 x 15, we map out the phase diagram. The quantum spin-liquid state found in the Hubbard model is shown to be robust against weak spin-orbit interaction, and is not adiabatically connected to the spin-Hall insulating state. Beyond a critical value of U > U_c both states are unstable toward magnetic ordering. Within the quantum spin-Hall state we study the spin, charge and single-particle dynamics of the helical Luttinger liquid by retaining the Hubbard interaction only on the edge of a ribbon. The Hubbard interaction greatly suppresses charge currents along the edge, promotes edge magnetism, but leaves the single-particle signatures of the helical liquid intact.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Fermi surface topology of the two-dimensional Kondo lattice model: a dynamical cluster approximation approach

We report the results of extensive dynamical cluster approximation calculations, based on a quantum Monte Carlo solver, for the two-dimensional Kondo lattice model. Our particular cluster implementation renders possible the simulation of spontaneous antiferromagnetic symmetry breaking. By explicitly computing the single-particle spectral function both in the paramagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases, we follow the evolution of the Fermi surface across this magnetic transition. The results, computed for clusters up to 16 orbitals, show clear evidence for the existence of three distinct Fermi surface topologies. The transition from the paramagnetic metallic phase to the antiferromagnetic metal is continuous; Kondo screening does not break down and we observe a back-folding of the paramagnetic heavy fermion band. Within the antiferromagnetic phase and when the ordered moment becomes large the Fermi surface evolves to one which is adiabatically connected to a Fermi surface where the local moments are frozen in an antiferromagnetic order.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Orbital-selective Mott transition and heavy fermion behavior in a bilayer Hubbard model for 3He

Inspired by recent experiments on 3He films between one and two atoms thick, we consider a bilayer Hubbard model on a triangular lattice. Our results are obtained in the framework of a cluster dynamical mean-field calculation with a quantum Monte Carlo impurity solver. For appropriate model parameters, we observe an enhancement of the effective mass as the first layer approaches integer filling and the second remains only partially filled. At finite temperatures, this increase of the effective mass -- or, equivalently, the decrease of the coherence temperature -- leads to a crossover to a state where the first layer fermions localize, drop out of the Luttinger volume, and generate essentially free local moments. This finite temperature behavior is shown to be robust against the cluster size above some critical temperature. The zero temperature phase diagram, however, depends on the cluster topology. In particular, for clusters with an even number of unit cells, the growth of the effective mass is cut off by a first-order, orbital-selective Mott transition.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Asymmetric spin-1/2 two-leg ladders

We consider asymmetric spin-1/2 two-leg ladders with non-equal antiferromagnetic (AF) couplings J_|| and κJ_|| along legs (κ<= 1) and ferromagnetic rung coupling, J_\perp. This model is characterized by a gap Δin the spectrum of spin excitations. We show that in the large J_\perp limit this gap is equivalent to the Haldane gap for the AF spin-1 chain, irrespective of the asymmetry of the ladder. The behavior of the gap at small rung coupling falls in two different universality classes. The first class, which is best understood from the case of the conventional symmetric ladder at κ=1, admits a linear scaling for the spin gap Δ~ J_\perp. The second class appears for a strong asymmetry of the coupling along legs, κJ_|| << J_\perp << J_|| and is characterized by two energy scales: the exponentially small spin gap Δ~ J_\perp \exp(-J_|| / J_\perp), and the bandwidth of the low-lying excitations induced by a Suhl-Nakamura indirect exchange ~ J_\perp^2 /J_|| . We report numerical results obtained by exact diagonalization, density matrix renormalization group and quantum Monte Carlo simulations for the spin gap and various spin correlation functions. Our data indicate that the behavior of the string order parameter, characterizing the hidden AF order in Haldane phase, is different in the limiting cases of weak and strong asymmetry. On the basis of the numerical data, we propose a low-energy theory of effective spin-1 variables, pertaining to large blocks on a decimated lattice.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Quantum spin-liquid emerging in two-dimensional correlated Dirac fermions

At sufficiently low temperatures, condensed-matter systems tend to develop order. An exception are quantum spin-liquids, where fluctuations prevent a transition to an ordered state down to the lowest temperatures. While such states are possibly realized in two-dimensional organic compounds, they have remained elusive in experimentally relevant microscopic two-dimensional models. Here, we show by means of large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations of correlated fermions on the honeycomb lattice, a structure realized in graphene, that a quantum spin-liquid emerges between the state described by massless Dirac fermions and an antiferromagnetically ordered Mott insulator. This unexpected quantum-disordered state is found to be a short-range resonating valence bond liquid, akin to the one proposed for high temperature superconductors. Therefore, the possibility of unconventional superconductivity through doping arises. We foresee its realization with ultra-cold atoms or with honeycomb lattices made with group IV elements.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Phonons and the coherence scale of models of heavy fermions

We consider models of heavy fermions in the strong coupling or local moment limit and include phonon degrees of freedom on the conduction electrons. Due to the large mass or low coherence temperature of the heavy fermion state, it is shown that such a regime is dominated by vertex corrections which leads to the complete failure of the Migdal theorem. Even at weak electron-phonon couplings, binding of the conduction electrons competes with the Kondo effect and substantially reduces the coherence temperature, ultimately leading to the Kondo breakdown. Those results are obtained using a combination of the slave boson method and Migdal-Eliashberg approximation as well as the dynamical mean-field theory approximation.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

Magnetic field induced semimetal-to-canted-antiferromagnet transition on the honeycomb lattice

It is shown that the semimetallic state of the two-dimensional honeycomb lattice with a point-like Fermi surface is unstable towards a canted antiferromagnetic insulator upon application of an in-plane magnetic field. This instability is already present at the mean-field level; the magnetic field shifts the up- and the down-spin cones in opposite directions thereby generating a finite density of states at the Fermi surface and a perfect nesting between the up- and the down-spin Fermi sheets. This perfect nesting triggers a canted antiferromagnetic insulating state. Our conclusions, based on mean-field arguments, are confirmed by auxiliary field projective quantum Monte Carlo methods on lattices up to $12 \times 12$ unit cells.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

Bilayer Hubbard model for 3He: a cluster dynamical mean-field calculation

Inspired by recent experiments on bilayer 3He, we consider a bilayer Hubbard model on a triangular lattice. For appropriate model parameters, we observe a band-selective Mott transition at a critical chemical potential, mu_c, corresponding to the solidification of the fermions in the first layer. The growth of the effective mass on the metallic side (mu < mu_c) is cut off by a first order transition in which the first layer fermions drop out of the Luttinger volume and their spin degrees of freedom become locked in a spin singlet state. These results are obtained from a cluster dynamical mean-field calculation on an eight-site cluster with a quantum Monte Carlo cluster solver.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Spin, charge and single-particle spectral functions of the one-dimensional quarter filled Holstein model

We use a recently developed extension of the weak coupling diagrammatic determinantal quantum Monte Carlo method to investigate the spin, charge and single particle spectral functions of the one-dimensional quarter-filled Holstein model with phonon frequency $ω_0 = 0.1 t$. As a function of the dimensionless electron-phonon coupling we observe a transition from a Luttinger to a Luther-Emery liquid with dominant $2k_f$ charge fluctuations. Emphasis is placed on the temperature dependence of the single particle spectral function. At high temperatures and in both phases it is well accounted for within a self-consistent Born approximation. In the low temperature Luttinger liquid phase we observe features which compare favorably with a bosonization approach retaining only forward scattering. In the Luther-Emery phase, the spectral function at low temperatures shows a quasiparticle gap which matches half the spin gap whereas at temperatures above which this quasiparticle gap closes, characteristic features of the Luttinger liquid model are apparent. Our results are based on lattice simulations on chains up to L=20 for two-particle properties and on CDMFT calculations with clusters up to 12 sites for the single-particle spectral function.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Evolution of the Fermi Surface across a Magnetic Order-Disorder Transition in the Two-Dimensional Kondo Lattice Model: A Dynamical Cluster Approach

We use the dynamical cluster approximation, with a quantum Monte Carlo cluster solver on clusters of up to 16 orbitals, to investigate the evolution of the Fermi surface across the magnetic order-disorder transition in the two-dimensional doped Kondo lattice model. In the paramagnetic phase we observe the generic hybridized heavy fermion band structure with large Luttinger volume. In the antiferromagnetic phase, the heavy fermion band drops below the Fermi surface giving way to hole pockets centered around k=(pi/2,pi/2) and equivalent points. In this phase Kondo screening does not break down but the topology of the resulting Fermi surface is that of a spin-density wave approximation in which the localized spins are frozen.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Systematic errors in Gaussian Quantum Monte Carlo and a systematic study of the symmetry projection method

Gaussian Quantum Monte Carlo (GQMC) is a stochastic phase space method for fermions with positive weights. In the example of the Hubbard model close to half filling it fails to reproduce all the symmetries of the ground state leading to systematic errors at low temperatures. In a previous work [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 72}, 224518 (2005)] we proposed to restore the broken symmetries by projecting the density matrix obtained from the simulation onto the ground state symmetry sector. For ground state properties, the accuracy of this method depends on a {\it large overlap} between the GQMC and exact density matrices. Thus, the method is not rigorously exact. We present the limits of the approach by a systematic study of the method for 2 and 3 leg Hubbard ladders for different fillings and on-site repulsion strengths. We show several indications that the systematic errors stem from non-vanishing boundary terms in the partial integration step in the derivation of the Fokker-Planck equation. Checking for spiking trajectories and slow decaying probability distributions provides an important test of the reliability of the results. Possible solutions to avoid boundary terms are discussed. Furthermore we compare results obtained from two different sampling methods: Reconfiguration of walkers and the Metropolis algorithm.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Coherence and metamagnetism in the two-dimensional Kondo lattice model

We report the results of dynamical mean field calculations for the metallic Kondo lattice model subject to an applied magnetic field. High-quality spectral functions reveal that the picture of rigid, hybridized bands, Zeeman-shifted in proportion to the field strength, is qualitatively correct. We find evidence of a zero-temperature magnetization plateau, whose onset coincides with the chemical potential entering the spin up hybridization gap. The plateau appears at the field scale predicted by (static) large-N mean field theory and has a magnetization value consistent with that of x=1-n_c spin-polarized heavy holes, where n_c < 1 is the conduction band filling of the noninteracting system. We argue that the emergence of the plateau at low temperature marks the onset of quasiparticle coherence.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

A Dynamical Quantum Cluster Approach to Two-Particle Correlation Functions in the Hubbard Model

We investigate the charge- and spin dynamical structure factors for the 2D one-band Hubbard model in the strong coupling regime within an extension of the Dynamical Cluster Approximation (DCA) to two-particle response functions. The full irreducible two-particle vertex with three momenta and frequencies is approximated by an effective vertex dependent on the momentum and frequency of the spin/charge excitation. In the spirit of the DCA, the effective vertex is calculated with quantum Monte Carlo methods on a finite cluster. On the basis of a comparison with high temperature auxiliary field quantum Monte Carlo data we show that near and beyond optimal doping, our results provide a consistent overall picture of the interplay between charge, spin and single-particle excitations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Dynamical dimer correlations at bipartite and non-bipartite Rokhsar-Kivelson points

We determine the dynamical dimer correlation functions of quantum dimer models at the Rokhsar-Kivelson point on the bipartite square and cubic lattices and the non-bipartite triangular lattice. Based on an algorithmic idea by Henley, we simulate a stochastic process of classical dimer configurations in continuous time and perform a stochastic analytical continuation to obtain the dynamical correlations in momentum space and the frequency domain. This approach allows us to observe directly the dispersion relations and the evolution of the spectral intensity within the Brillouin zone beyond the single-mode approximation. On the square lattice, we confirm analytical predictions related to soft modes close to the wavevectors (pi,pi) and (pi,0) and further reveal the existence of shadow bands close to the wavevector (0,0). On the cubic lattice the spectrum is also gapless but here only a single soft mode at (pi,pi,pi) is found, as predicted by the single mode approximation. The soft mode has a quadratic dispersion at very long wavelength, but crosses over to a linear behavior very rapidly. We believe this to be the remnant of the linearly dispersing "photon" of the Coulomb phase. Finally the triangular lattice is in a fully gapped liquid phase where the bottom of the dimer spectrum exhibits a rich structure. At the M point the gap is minimal and the spectral response is dominated by a sharp quasiparticle peak. On the other hand, at the X point the spectral function is much broader. We sketch a possible explanation based on the crossing of the coherent dimer excitations into the two-vison continuum.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2007

Diagrammatic Determinantal methods: projective schemes and applications to the Hubbard-Holstein model

We extend the weak-coupling diagrammatic determinantal algorithm to projective schemes as well as to the inclusion of phonon degrees of freedom. The projective approach provides a very efficient algorithm to access zero temperature properties. To implement phonons, we integrate them out in favor of a retarded density-density interaction and simulate the resulting purely electronic action with the weak-coupling diagrammatic determinantal algorithm. Both extensions are tested within the dynamical mean field approximation for the Hubbard and Hubbard-Holstein models.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2007

Spin gap and string order parameter in the ferromagnetic Spiral Staircase Heisenberg Ladder: a quantum Monte Carlo study

We consider a spin-1/2 ladder with a ferromagnetic rung coupling J_\perp and inequivalent chains. This model is obtained by a twist (θ) deformation of the ladder and interpolates between the isotropic ladder (θ=0) and the SU(2) ferromagnetic Kondo necklace model (θ=π). We show that the ground state in the (θ,J_\perp) plane has a finite string order parameter characterising the Haldane phase. Twisting the chain introduces a new energy scale, which we interpret in terms of a Suhl-Nakamura interaction. As a consequence we observe a crossover in the scaling of the spin gap at weak coupling from Δ/J_\| \propto J_\perp/J_\| for θ< θ_c \simeq 8π/9 to Δ/J_\| \propto (J_\perp/J_\|)^2 for θ> θ_c. Those results are obtained on the basis of large scale Quantum Monte Carlo calculations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2006

Spin nematic phases in models of correlated electron systems: a numerical study

Strongly interacting systems are known to often spontaneously develop exotic ground states under certain conditions. For instance, spin nematic phases have been discovered in various magnetic models. Such phases, which break spin symmetry but have no net local magnetization, have also been proposed by Nersesyan et al. (J. Phys.: Cond. Matt. 3, 3353 (1991)) in the context of electronic models. We introduce a N-flavor microscopic model that interpolates from the large-N limit, where mean-field is valid and such a nematic phase occurs, to the more realistic N=1 case. By using a sign-free quantum Monte-Carlo, we show the existence of a spin nematic phase (analogous to a spin flux phase) for finite N; when N decreases, quantum fluctuations increase and this phase ultimately disappears in favor of an s-wave superconducting state. We also show that this nematic phase extends up to a finite critical charge doping. Dynamical studies allow us to clarify the Fermi surface property: in the nematic phase at half-filling, it consists of 4 points and the low-energy structure has a Dirac cone-like shape. Under doping, we observe clear signatures of Fermi pockets around these points. This is one of the few examples where numerical simulations show how quantum fluctuations can destroy a large-N phase.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2006

Single hole dynamics in the Kondo Necklace and Bilayer Heisenberg models on a square lattice

We study single hole dynamics in the bilayer Heisenberg and Kondo Necklace models. Those models exhibit a magnetic order-disorder quantum phase transition as a function of the interlayer coupling J_perp. At strong coupling in the disordered phase, both models have a single-hole dispersion relation with band maximum at p = (π,π) and an effective mass at this p-point which scales as the hopping matrix element t. In the Kondo Necklace model, we show that the effective mass at p = (π,π) remains finite for all considered values of J_perp such that the strong coupling features of the dispersion relation are apparent down to weak coupling. In contrast, in the bilayer Heisenberg model, the effective mass diverges at a finite value of J_perp. This divergence of the effective mass is unrelated to the magnetic quantum phase transition and at weak coupling the dispersion relation maps onto that of a single hole doped in a planar antiferromagnet with band maximum at p = (π/2,π/2). We equally study the behavior of the quasiparticle residue in the vicinity of the magnetic quantum phase transition both for a mobile and static hole. In contrast to analytical approaches, our numerical results do not unambiguously support the fact that the quasiparticle residue of the static hole vanishes in the vicinity of the critical point. The above results are obtained with a generalized version of the loop algorithm to include single hole dynamics on lattice sizes up to 20 X 20.

cond-mat.str-el↗