arXiv subjects

Jan von Delft

Publications and source records attributed to Jan von Delft.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Two-temperature scales in the triangular-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet

The anomalous thermodynamic properties of the paradigmatic frustrated spin-1/2 triangular lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet (TLH) has remained an open topic of research over decades, both experimentally and theoretically. Here we further the theoretical understanding based on the recently developed, powerful exponential tensor renormalization group (XTRG) method on cylinders and stripes in a quasi one-dimensional (1D) setup, as well as a tensor product operator approach directly in 2D. The observed thermal properties of the TLH are in excellent agreement with two recent experimental measurements on the virtually ideal TLH material Ba$_8$CoNb$_6$O$_{24}$. Remarkably, our numerical simulations reveal two crossover temperature scales, at $T_l/J \sim 0.20$ and $T_h/J\sim 0.55$, with $J$ the Heisenberg exchange coupling, which are also confirmed by a more careful inspection of the experimental data. We propose that in the intermediate regime between the low-temperature scale $T_l$ and the higher one $T_h$, the gapped "roton-like" excitations are activated with a strong chiral component and a large contribution to thermal entropies, which suppress the incipient 120$^\circ$ order that emerges for temperatures below $T_l$.

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arXiv2019

Signatures of Mottness and Hundness in archetypal correlated metals

Physical properties of multi-orbital materials depend not only on the strength of the effective interactions among the valence electrons but also on their type. Strong correlations are caused by either Mott physics that captures the Coulomb repulsion among charges, or Hund physics that aligns the spins in different orbitals. We identify four energy scales marking the onset and the completion of screening in orbital and spin channels. The differences in these scales, which are manifest in the temperature dependence of the local spectrum and of the charge, spin and orbital susceptibilities, provide clear signatures distinguishing Mott and Hund physics. We illustrate these concepts with realistic studies of two archetypal strongly correlated materials, and corroborate the generality of our conclusions with a model Hamiltonian study.

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arXiv2019

Nonequilibrium Steady-State Transport in Quantum Impurity Models: a Thermofield and Quantum Quench Approach using Matrix Product States

The numerical renormalization group (NRG) is tailored to describe interacting impurity models in equilibrium, but faces limitations for steady-state nonequilibrium, arising, e.g., due to an applied bias voltage. We show that these limitations can be overcome by describing the thermal leads using a thermofield approach, integrating out high energy modes using NRG, and then treating the nonequilibrium dynamics at low energies using a quench protocol, implemented using the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (tDMRG). This yields quantitatively reliable results for the current (with errors $\lesssim 3\%$) down to the exponentially small energy scales characteristic of impurity models. We present results of benchmark quality for the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the zero-bias conductance peak for the single-impurity Anderson model.

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arXiv2018

Derivation of exact flow equations from the self-consistent parquet relations

We exploit the parquet formalism to derive exact flow equations for the two-particle-reducible four-point vertices, the self-energy, and typical response functions, circumventing the reliance on higher-point vertices. This includes a concise, algebraic derivation of the multiloop flow equations, which have previously been obtained by diagrammatic considerations. Integrating the multiloop flow for a given input of the totally irreducible vertex is equivalent to solving the parquet equations with that input. Hence, one can tune systems from solvable limits to complicated situations by variation of one-particle parameters, staying at the fully self-consistent solution of the parquet equations throughout the flow. Furthermore, we use the resulting differential form of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the self-energy to demonstrate one-particle conservation of the parquet approximation and to construct a conserving two-particle vertex via functional differentiation of the parquet self-energy. Our analysis gives a unified picture of the various many-body relations and exact renormalization group equations.

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arXiv2018

Hundness versus Mottness in a three-band Hubbard-Hund model: On the origin of strong correlations in Hund metals

Hund metals are multi-orbital systems with moderate Coulomb interaction, $U$, and sizeable Hund's rule coupling, $J<U$, that aligns the spins in different orbitals. They show strong correlation effects, like very low Fermi-liquid coherence scales and intriguing incoherent transport regimes, resulting in bad metallic behavior. But to what extent are these strong correlations governed by Mottness, i.e. the blocking of charge fluctuations close to a Mott insulator transition (MIT) induced by $U$, or by Hundness, a new route towards strong correlations induced by $J$? To answer this question, we study the full phase diagram of a degenerate three-band Hubbard-Hund model on a Bethe lattice at zero temperature using single-site DMFT and the numerical renormalization group as efficient real-frequency multi-band impurity solver. Hund metal behavior occurs in this minimal model for a filling close to $n_d=2$, moderate $U$ and sizeable $J$, the "Hund-metal regime", with strong correlations manifest by a low quasiparticle weight, $Z$. We show that "spin-orbital separation" (SOS) is a generic $J$-induced feature in the whole metallic regime of the phase diagram for $1<n_d<3$ and sizeable $J$: orbital screening occurs at much higher energies than spin screening, below which Fermi-liquid behavior sets in. The low $Z$ can then be explained in terms of the $J$-reduced Fermi-liquid scale. We further show that, in the Hund-metal regime, far from any MIT, Hundness -- the localization of large spins -- is the key player to induce strong correlations. There, physical properties are governed by a broad incoherent energy regime of SOS with intriguing Hund metal physics: large, almost unscreened spins are coupled to screened orbital degrees of freedom.

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arXiv2018

At which magnetic field, exactly, does the Kondo resonance begin to split? A Fermi liquid description of the low-energy properties of the Anderson model

This paper is a corrected version of Phys. Rev. B 95, 165404 (2017), which we have retracted because it contained a trivial but fatal sign error that lead to incorrect conclusions. --- We extend a recently-eveloped Fermi-liquid (FL) theory for the asymmetric single-impurity Anderson model [C. Mora $et al.$, Phys. Rev. B, 92, 075120 (2015)] to the case of an arbitrary local magnetic field. To describe the system's low-lying quasiparticle excitations for arbitrary values of the bare Hamiltonian's model parameters, we construct an effective low-energy FL Hamiltonian whose FL parameters are expressed in terms of the local level's spin-dependent ground-state occupations and their derivatives with respect to level energy and local magnetic field. These quantities are calculable with excellent accuracy from the Bethe Ansatz solution of the Anderson model. Applying this effective model to a quantum dot in a nonequilibrium setting, we obtain exact results for the curvature of the spectral function, $c_A$, describing its leading $\sim\varepsilon^2$ term, and the transport coefficients $c_V$ and $c_T$, describing the leading $\sim V^2$ and $\sim T^2$ terms in the nonlinear differential conductance. A sign change in $c_A$ or $c_V$ is indicative of a change from a local maximum to a local minimum in the spectral function or nonlinear conductance, respectively, as is expected to occur when an increasing magnetic field causes the Kondo resonance to split into two subpeaks. We find that the fields $B_A$, $B_T$ and $B_V$ at which $c_A$, $c_T$ and $c_V$ change sign, respectively, are all of order $T_K$, as expected, with $B_A = B_T = B_V = 0.75073\,T_K$ in the Kondo limit.

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arXiv2018

Functional Renormalization Group treatment of the 0.7-analog in quantum point contacts

We use a recently developed fRG method (extendend Coupled-Ladder Approximation) to study the 0.7-analog in quantum point contacts, arising at the crossing of the 1st and 2nd band at suf- ficiently high magnetic fields. We reproduce the main features of the experimentally observed magnetic field dependence of the conductance at the 0.7-analog, using a QPC model with two bands and short-range interactions. In particular, we reproduce the fact that this dependence is quali- tatively different, depending on whether the analog is approached from higher or lower magnetic fields. We show that this effect can be explained qualitatively within a simple Hartree picture for the influence of the lowest electrons.

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arXiv2018

Fermi-edge singularity and the functional renormalization group

We study the Fermi-edge singularity, describing the response of a degenerate electron system to optical excitation, in the framework of the functional renormalization group (fRG). Results for the (interband) particle-hole susceptibility from various implementations of fRG (one- and two- particle-irreducible, multi-channel Hubbard-Stratonovich, flowing susceptibility) are compared to the summation of all leading logarithmic (log) diagrams, achieved by a (first-order) solution of the parquet equations. For the (zero-dimensional) special case of the X-ray-edge singularity, we show that the leading log formula can be analytically reproduced in a consistent way from a truncated, one-loop fRG flow. However, reviewing the underlying diagrammatic structure, we show that this derivation relies on fortuitous partial cancellations special to the form of and accuracy applied to the X-ray-edge singularity and does not generalize.

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arXiv2018

Two-color Fermi liquid theory for transport through a multilevel Kondo impurity

We consider a quantum dot with ${\cal K}{\geq} 2$ orbital levels occupied by two electrons connected to two electric terminals. The generic model is given by a multi-level Anderson Hamiltonian. The weak-coupling theory at the particle-hole symmetric point is governed by a two-channel $S{=}1$ Kondo model characterized by intrinsic channels asymmetry. Based on a conformal field theory approach we derived an effective Hamiltonian at a strong-coupling fixed point. The Hamiltonian capturing the low-energy physics of a two-stage Kondo screening represents the quantum impurity by a two-color local Fermi-liquid. Using non-equilibrium (Keldysh) perturbation theory around the strong-coupling fixed point we analyze the transport properties of the model at finite temperature, Zeeman magnetic field and source-drain voltage applied across the quantum dot. We compute the Fermi-liquid transport constants and discuss different universality classes associated with emergent symmetries.

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arXiv2018

Nonequilibrium Kondo effect in a magnetic field: Auxiliary master equation approach

We study the single-impurity Anderson model out of equilibrium under the influence of a bias voltage $ϕ$ and a magnetic field $B$. We investigate the interplay between the shift ($ω_B$) of the Kondo peak in the spin-resolved density of states (DOS) and the one ($ϕ_B$) of the conductance anomaly. In agreement with experiments and previous theoretical calculations we find that, while the latter displays a rather linear behavior with an almost constant slope as a function of $B$ down to the Kondo scale, the DOS shift first features a slower increase reaching the same behavior as $ϕ_B$ only for $|g| μ_B B \gg k_B T_K$. Our auxiliary master equation approach yields highly accurate nonequilibrium results for the DOS and for the conductance all the way from within the Kondo up to the charge fluctuation regime, showing excellent agreement with a recently introduced scheme based on a combination of numerical renormalization group with time-dependent density matrix renormalization group.

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arXiv2018

Flavor fluctuations in 3-level quantum dots: Generic SU(3)-Kondo fixed point in equilibrium and non-Kondo fixed points in nonequilibrium

We study a $3$-level quantum dot in the singly occupied cotunneling regime coupled via a generic tunneling matrix to several multi-channel leads in equilibrium or nonequilibrium. We derive an effective model where also each reservoir has three channels labelled by the quark flavors $u$, $d$ and $s$ with an effective d.o.s. polarized w.r.t. an eight-dimensional $F$-spin corresponding to the eight generators of $SU(3)$. In equilibrium we perform a standard poor man scaling analysis and show that tunneling via virtual intermediate states induces flavor fluctuations on the dot which become $SU(3)$-symmetric at a characteristic and exponentially small low-energy scale $T_K$. Using the numerical renormalization group (NRG) we study in detail the linear conductance and confirm the $SU(3)$-symmetric Kondo fixed point with universal conductance $G=2.25 e^2/h$ for various tunneling setups by tuning the level spacings on the dot. In contrast to the equilibrium case, we find in nonequilibrium that the fixed point model is not $SU(3)$-symmetric but characterized by rotated $F$-spins for each reservoir with total vanishing sum. At large voltage we analyse the $F$-spin magnetization and the current in golden rule as function of a magnetic field for the isospin of the up/down quark and the level spacing to the strange quark. As a smoking gun to detect the nonequilibrium fixed point we find that the curve of zero $F$-spin magnetization has a particular shape on the dot parameters. We propose that our findings can be generalized to the case of quantum dots with an arbitrary number $N$ of levels.

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arXiv2018

Emergent spin-1 trimerized valence bond crystal in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the star lattice

We explore the frustrated spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg model on the star lattice with antiferromagnetic (AF) couplings inside each triangle and ferromagnetic (FM) inter-triangle couplings ($J_e<0$), and calculate its magnetic and thermodynamic properties. We show that the FM couplings do not sabotage the magnetic disordering of the ground state due to the frustration from the AF interactions inside each triangle, but trigger a fully gapped inversion-symmetry-breaking trimerized valence bond crystal (TVBC) with emergent spin-1 degrees of freedom. We discover that with strengthening $J_e$, the system scales exponentially, either with or without a magnetic field $h$: the order parameter, the five critical fields that separate the $J_e$-$h$ ground-state phase diagram into six phases, and the excitation gap obtained by low-temperature specific heat, all depend exponentially on $J_e$. We calculate the temperature dependence of the specific heat, which can be directly compared with future experiments.

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arXiv2018

Multiloop functional renormalization group for general models

We present multiloop flow equations in the functional renormalization group (fRG) framework for the four-point vertex and self-energy, formulated for a general fermionic many-body problem. This generalizes the previously introduced vertex flow [F. B. Kugler and J. von Delft, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 057403 (2018)] and provides the necessary corrections to the self-energy flow in order to complete the derivative of all diagrams involved in the truncated fRG flow. Due to its iterative one-loop structure, the multiloop flow is well-suited for numerical algorithms, enabling improvement of many fRG computations. We demonstrate its equivalence to a solution of the (first-order) parquet equations in conjunction with the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the self-energy.

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arXiv2018

Multiloop functional renormalization group that sums up all parquet diagrams

We present a multiloop flow equation for the four-point vertex in the functional renormalization group (fRG) framework. The multiloop flow consists of successive one-loop calculations and sums up all parquet diagrams to arbitrary order. This provides substantial improvement of fRG computations for the four-point vertex and, consequently, the self-energy. Using the X-ray-edge singularity as an example, we show that solving the multiloop fRG flow is equivalent to solving the (first-order) parquet equations and illustrate this with numerical results.

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arXiv2017

Generalized Schrieffer-Wolff transformation of multi-flavor Hubbard models

We give a self-contained derivation of the low-energy effective interactions of the SU($N$) Hubbard model, a multiflavor generalization of the one-band Hubbard model, by using a generalized Schrieffer-Wolff transformation (SWT). The effective interaction of doublons and holons, which has been largely ignored in previous SWT studies (e.g., the $t$-$J$ model), leads to distinct peaks in the local density of states. As shown by Lee et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 236402 (2017)], this underlying effective doublon-holon interaction explains the numerical observation of the subpeaks at the inner edges of the Hubbard bands in the metallic phase close to the Mott transition.

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arXiv2017

Doublon-holon origin of the subpeaks at the Hubbard band edges

Dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) studies frequently observe a fine structure in the local spectral function of the SU(2) Fermi-Hubbard model at half filling: In the metallic phase close to the Mott transition, subpeaks emerge at the inner edges of the Hubbard bands. Here we demonstrate that these subpeaks originate from the low-energy effective interaction of doublon-holon pairs, by investigating how the correlation functions of doublon and holon operators contribute to the subpeaks. A mean-field analysis of the low-energy effective Hamiltonian provides results consistent with our DMFT calculation using the numerical renormalization group as an impurity solver. In the SU(3) and SU(4) Hubbard models, the subpeaks become more pronounced due to the increased degeneracy of doublon-holon pair excitations.

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arXiv2017

Fermi-edge exciton-polaritons in doped semiconductor microcavities with finite hole mass

The coupling between a 2D semiconductor quantum well and an optical cavity gives rise to combined light-matter excitations, the exciton-polaritons. These were usually measured when the conduction band is empty, making the single polariton physics a simple single-body problem. The situation is dramatically different in the presence of a finite conduction band population, where the creation or annihilation of a single exciton involves a many-body shakeup of the Fermi sea. Recent experiments in this regime revealed a strong modification of the exciton-polariton spectrum. Previous theoretical studies concerned with nonzero Fermi energy mostly relied on the approximation of an immobile valence band hole with infinite mass, which is appropriate for low-mobility samples only; for high-mobility samples, one needs to consider a mobile hole with large but finite mass. To bridge this gap we present an analytical diagrammatic approach and tackle a model with short-ranged (screened) electron-hole interaction, studying it in two complementary regimes. We find that the finite hole mass has opposite effects on the exciton-polariton spectra in the two regimes: In the first, where the Fermi energy is much smaller than the exciton binding energy, excitonic features are enhanced by the finite mass. In the second regime, where the Fermi energy is much larger than the exciton binding energy, finite mass effects cut off the excitonic features in the polariton spectra, in qualitative agreement with recent experiments.

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arXiv2017

Filling-driven Mott transition in SU(N) Hubbard models

We study the filling-driven Mott transition involving the metallic and paramagnetic insulating phases in SU(N) Fermi-Hubbard models, using dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) and the numerical renormalization group (NRG) as impurity solver. The compressibility shows a striking temperature dependence: near the critical temperature, it is strongly enhanced in the metallic phase close to the insulating phase. We demonstrate that this compressibility enhancement is associated with the thermal suppression of the quasiparticle peak in the local spectral functions. We also explain that the asymmetric shape of the quasiparticle peak originates from the asymmetry in the underlying doublon-holon dynamics.

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