arXiv subjects

Karsten Held

Publications and source records attributed to Karsten Held.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Strongly correlated superconductivity with long-range spatial fluctuations

We review recent studies for superconductivity using diagrammatic extensions of dynamical mean field theory. These approaches take into account simultaneously both, the local correlation effect and spatial long-range fluctuations, which are essential to describe unconventional superconductivity in a quasi-two-dimensional plane. The results reproduce and predict the experimental phase diagrams of strongly correlated system such as cuprates and nickelates. Further studies reveal that the dynamical screening effect of the pairing interaction vertex has dramatic consequences for the transition temperature and may even support exotic mechanisms like odd-frequency pairing. We also discuss the dimensionality of layered materials and how to interpret the numerical results in two dimensions.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2022

Trie-based ranking of quantum many-body states

Ranking bit patterns -- finding the index of a given pattern in an ordered sequence -- is a major bottleneck scaling up numerical quantum many-body calculations, as fermionic and hard-core bosonic states translate naturally to bit patterns. Traditionally, ranking is done by bisectioning search, which has poor cache performance on modern machines. We instead propose to use tries (prefix trees), thereby achieving a two- to ten-fold speed-up in numerical experiments with only moderate memory overhead. For the important problem of ranking permutations, the corresponding tries can be compressed. These compressed "staggered" lookups allow for a considerable speed-up while retaining the memory requirements of prior algorithms based on the combinatorial number system.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Toward Functionalized Ultrathin Oxide Films: the Impact of Surface Apical Oxygen

Thin films of transition metal oxides open up a gateway to nanoscale electronic devices beyond silicon characterized by novel electronic functionalities. While such films are commonly prepared in an oxygen atmosphere, they are typically considered to be ideally terminated with the stoichiometric composition. Using the prototypical correlated metal SrVO$_3$ as an example, it is demonstrated that this idealized description overlooks an essential ingredient: oxygen adsorbing at the surface apical sites. The oxygen adatoms, which persist even in an ultrahigh vacuum environment, are shown to severely affect the intrinsic electronic structure of a transition metal oxide film. Their presence leads to the formation of an electronically dead surface layer but also alters the band filling and the electron correlations in the thin films. These findings highlight that it is important to take into account surface apical oxygen or -- mutatis mutandis -- the specific oxygen configuration imposed by a capping layer to predict the behavior of ultrathin films of transition metal oxides near the single unit-cell limit.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Interplay between magnetic and superconducting fluctuations in the doped 2d Hubbard model

We study the Hubbard model on a square lattice, using the dynamical vertex approximation and the parquet approximation. These methods allow us to describe the mutual interference of spin-fluctuations in the particle-hole channel and superconducting fluctuations in the cooperon channel in an unbiased way. For small dopings we find predominant commensurable antiferromagnetic spin- and d-wave superconducting fluctuations; for larger doping incommensurate antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations are concomitant to triplet s-wave superconducting fluctuations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Particle-hole asymmetric lifetimes promoted by spin and orbital fluctuations in SrVO$_3$ monolayers

The two-dimensional nature of engineered transition-metal ultra-thin oxide films offers a large playground of yet to be fully understood physics. Here, we study pristine SrVO$_3$ monolayers that have recently been predicted to display a variety of magnetic and orbital orders. Above all ordering temperatures, we find that the associated non-local fluctuations lead to a momentum differentiation in the self-energy, particularly in the scattering rate. In the one-band 2D Hubbard model, momentum-selectivity on the Fermi surface ("$k=k_F$") is known to lead to pseudogap physics. Here instead, in the multi-orbital case, we evidence a differentiation between momenta on the occupied ("$k k_F$") of the Fermi surface. Our work, based on the dynamical vertex approximation, complements the understanding of spectral signatures of non-local fluctuations, calls to (re)examine other ultra-thin oxide films and interfaces with methods beyond dynamical mean-field theory, and may point to correlation-enhanced thermoelectric effects.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Zoology of spin and orbital fluctuations in ultrathin oxide films

Many metallic transition-metal oxides turn insulating when grown as films that are only a few unit-cells thick. The microscopic origins of these thickness induced metal-to-insulator transitions however remain under dispute. Here, we simulate the extreme case of a monolayer of an inconspicuous correlated metal -- the strontium vanadate SrVO$_3$ -- deposited on a SrTiO$_3$ substrate. Crucially, our system can have a termination to vacuum consisting of either a SrO or a VO$_2$ top layer. While we find that both lead to Mott insulating behavior at nominal stoichiometry, the phase diagram emerging upon doping -- chemically or through an applied gate voltage -- is qualitatively different. Indeed, our many-body calculations reveal a cornucopia of nonlocal fluctuations associated with (in)commensurate antiferromagnetic, ferromagnetic, as well as stripe and checkerboard orbital ordering instabilities. Identifying that the two geometries yield crystal-field splittings of opposite signs, we elucidate the ensuing phases through the lens of the orbital degrees of freedom. Quite generally, our work highlights that interface and surface reconstruction and the deformation or severing of coordination polyhedra in ultra-thin films drive rich properties that are radically different from the material's bulk physics.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Phase diagram of nickelate superconductors calculated by dynamical vertex approximation

We review the electronic structure of nickelate superconductors with and without effects of electronic correlations. As a minimal model we identify the one-band Hubbard model for the Ni 3$d_{x^2-y^2}$ orbital plus a pocket around the $A$-momentum. The latter however merely acts as a decoupled electron reservoir. This reservoir makes a careful translation from {nominal} Sr-doping to the doping of the one-band Hubbard model mandatory. Our dynamical mean-field theory calculations, in part already supported by experiment, indicate that the $Γ$ pocket, Nd 4$f$ orbitals, oxygen 2$p$ and {the} other Ni 3$d$ orbitals are not relevant in the superconducting doping regime. The physics is completely different if topotactic hydrogen is present or the oxygen reduction is incomplete. Then, a two-band physics hosted by the Ni 3$d_{x^2-y^2}$ and 3$d_{3z^2-r^2}$ orbitals emerges. Based on our minimal modeling we calculated the superconducting $T_c$ vs. Sr-doping $x$ phase diagram prior to experiment using the dynamical vertex approximation. For such a notoriously difficult to determine quantity as $T_c$, the agreement with experiment is astonishingly good. The prediction that $T_c$ is enhanced with pressure or compressive strain, has been confirmed experimentally as well. This supports that the one-band Hubbard model plus an electron reservoir is the appropriate minimal model.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Efficient Adaptive Computation of the Dynamics of Mott Transistors

We investigate time-adaptive Magnus-type integrators for the numerical approximation of a Mott transistor. The rapidly attenuating electromagnetic field calls for adaptive choice of the time steps. As a basis for step selection, asymptotically correct defect-based estimators of the local error are employed. We analyze the error of the numerical approximation in the presence of the unsmooth external potential and demonstrate the advantages of the adaptive approach.

math.NA↗

arXiv2021

Correlations turn electronic structure of finite-layer nickelates upside down

Motivated by the recent discovery of superconductivity in the pentalayer nickelate Nd$_6$Ni$_5$O$_{12}$ [Nature Materials 10.1038], we calculate its electronic structure and superconducting critical temperature. We find that electronic correlations are essential for pushing Nd$_6$Ni$_5$O$_{12}$ into the superconducting doping range as they shift the electron pockets above the Fermi energy. As a consequence, Nd$_6$Ni$_5$O$_{12}$ can be described with a single $d_{x^2-y^2}$ orbital per Ni. Instead, for the bilayer nickelate Nd$_3$Ni$_2$O$_6$ we find correlations to drive the system into a three-orbital regime also involving the Ni $d_{xz,yz}$ states. We suggest, however, that single-orbital physics with optimal doping can be restored by substituting 60% of the trivalent Nd or La by tetravalent Zr.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Broadening and sharpening of the Drude peak through antiferromagnetic fluctuations

Antiferromagnetic or charge density wave fluctuations couple with light through the recently discovered π-ton contribution to the optical conductivity, and quite generically constitute the dominant vertex corrections in low-dimensional correlated electron systems. Here we study the arguably simplest version of these $π$-tons based on the semi-analytical random phase approximation (RPA) ladder in the transversal particle-hole channel. The vertex corrections to the optical conductivity are calculated directly for real frequencies. We validate that the RPA qualitatively reproduces the π-ton vertex corrections to the Drude peak in the Hubbard model. Depending on the temperature we find vertex corrections to broaden or sharpen the Drude peak.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Hidden, one-dimensional, strongly nested, and almost half-filled Fermi surface in Ba$_2$CuO$_{3+y}$ superconductors

All previous cuprate superconductors display a set of common features: (i) vicinity to a Cu 3$d^{9}$ configuration; (ii) separated CuO$_2$ planes; (iii) superconductivity for doping $δ\sim$ 0.1$-$0.3. Recently [PNAS {\bf 24}, 12156 (2019)] challenged this picture by discovering "highly overdoped" superconducting Ba$_2$CuO$_{3+y}$. Using density-functional theory + dynamical mean-field theory, we reveal a bilayer structure of Ba$_2$CuO$_{3.2}$ of alternating quasi 2D and quasi 1D character. Correlations tune an inter-layer self-doping leading to an almost half-filled, strongly nested quasi 1D $d_{b^2-c^2}$ band, which is prone to strong antiferromagnetic fluctuations, possibly at the origin of superconductivity in Ba$_2$CuO$_{3+y}$.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Origin of the Background Absorption in Carbon Nanotubes: Phonon-Assisted Excitonic Continuum

Excitonic effects in 1D semiconductors can be qualitatively different from those in higher dimensions. In particular, the Sommerfeld factor, the ratio of the above-band-edge excitonic continuum absorption to free electron-hole pair generation, has been shown to be less than 1 (i.e., suppressed) in 1D systems while it is larger than1 (i.e., enhanced) in 2D and 3D systems. Strong continuum suppression indeed exists in semiconducting single-wall carbon nanotubes, a prototypical 1D semiconductor. However, absorption spectra for carbon nanotubes are typically fit with a combination of Lorentzians and a polynomial background baseline with little physical meaning. Here, we performed absorption measurements in aligned single-chirality (6,5) carbon nanotube films. The obtained spectra were fit with our theoretical model obtained by solving the Boltzmann scattering equation (i.e., the quantum Fokker-Planck equation), involving fifty-nine different types of transitions among three different types of quasiparticles. Specifically, we took into account microscopic interactions between photons, phonons, and excitons, including their dispersions, which unambiguously demonstrated that the background absorption is due to phonon-assisted transitions from the semiconductor vacuum to finite-momentum continuum states of excitons. The excellent agreement we obtained between experiment and theory suggests that our numerical technique can be seamlessly extended to compute strongly out-of-equilibrium many-body dynamics and time-resolved spectra in low-dimensional materials.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2021

ana_cont: Python package for analytic continuation

We present the Python package ana_cont for the analytic continuation of fermionic and bosonic many-body Green's functions by means of either the Pade approximants or the maximum entropy method. The determination of hyperparameters and the implementation are described in detail. The code is publicly available on GitHub, where also documentation and learning resources are provided.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Efficient Magnus-type integrators for solar energy conversion in Hubbard models

Strongly interacting electrons in solids are generically described by Hubbardtype models, and the impact of solar light can be modeled by an additional time-dependence. This yields a finite dimensional system of ordinary differential equations (ODE)s of Schrödinger type, which can be solved numerically by exponential time integrators of Magnus type. The efficiency may be enhanced by combining these with operator splittings. We will discuss several different approaches of employing exponential-based methods in conjunction with an adaptive Lanczos method for the evaluation of matrix exponentials and compare their accuracy and efficiency. For each integrator, we use defect-based local error estimators to enable adaptive time-stepping. This serves to reliably control the approximation error and reduce the computational effort

math.NA↗

arXiv2021

Tiling with triangles: parquet and $GWγ$ methods unified

The parquet formalism and Hedin's $GWγ$ approach are unified into a single theory of vertex corrections, corresponding to an exact reformulation of the parquet equations in terms of boson exchange. The method has no drawbacks compared to previous parquet solvers but has the significant advantage that the vertex functions decay quickly with frequencies and with respect to distances in real space. These properties coincide with the respective separation of the length and energy scales of the two-particle correlations into long/short-ranged and high/low-energetic.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Self-consistent ladder D$Γ$A approach

We present and implement a self-consistent D$Γ$A approach for multi-orbital models and ab initio materials calculations. It is applied to the one-band Hubbard model at various interaction strengths with and without doping, to the two-band Hubbard model with two largely different bandwidths, and to SrVO$_3$. The self-energy feedback reduces critical temperatures compared to dynamical mean-field theory, even to zero temperature in two-dimensions. Compared to a one-shot, non-self-consistent calculation the non-local correlations are significantly reduced when they are strong. In case non-local correlations are weak to moderate as for SrVO$_3$, one-shot calculations are sufficient.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Enhancement of impact ionization in Hubbard clusters by disorder and next-nearest-neighbor hopping

We perform time-resolved exact diagonalization of the Hubbard model with time dependent hoppings on small clusters of up to $12$ sites. Here, the time dependence originates from a classic electromagnetic pulse, which mimics the impact of a photon. We investigate the behavior of the double occupation and spectral function after the pulse for different cluster geometries and on-site potentials. We find impact ionization in all studied geometries except for one-dimensional chains. Adding next-nearest neighbor hopping to the model leads to a significant enhancement of impact ionization, as does disorder and geometric frustration of a triangular lattice.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

How correlations change the magnetic structure factor of the kagome Hubbard model

The kagome Hubbard model (KHM) is a paradigmatic example of a frustrated two-dimensional model. While its strongly correlated regime, described by a Heisenberg model, is of topical interest due to its enigmatic prospective spin-liquid ground state, the weakly and moderately correlated regimes remain largely unexplored. Motivated by the rapidly growing number of metallic kagome materials (e.g., Mn$_3$Sn, Fe$_3$Sn$_2$, FeSn, Co$_3$Sn$_2$S$_2$, Gd$_3$Ru$_4$Al$_{12}$), we study the respective regimes of the KHM by means of three complementary numerical methods: the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), the dynamical vertex approximation (D$Γ$A), and determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC). In contrast to the archetypal square-lattice, we find no tendencies towards magnetic ordering, as magnetic correlations remain short-range. Nevertheless, the magnetic correlations undergo a remarkable crossover as the system approaches the metal-to-insulator transition. The Mott transition itself does however not affect the magnetic correlations. Our equal-time and dynamical structure factors can be used as a reference for inelastic neutron scattering experiments on the growing family of metallic kagome materials.

cond-mat.str-el↗