arXiv subjects

Luciano Zinni

Publications and source records attributed to Luciano Zinni.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Competing Interlayer Loop Currents and Superconductivity in the Bilayer $t$-$J_\perp$-$V$ Model

The recent discovery of high-$T_c$ superconductivity in pressurized and thin-film bilayer nickelates, featuring a strong interlayer exchange coupling, and their potential similarities with cuprate superconductors, has made this a very active topic in condensed matter physics. In the present paper we study the strongly correlated one-orbital ($d_{x^2-y^2}$) bilayer $t$-$J_\perp$-$V$ model for nickelates, where $V$ denotes the Coulomb interactions, using a controlled large-$N$ expansion at and beyond the mean-field level. Focusing on the out-of-plane spin exchange interaction ($J_\perp$), we find that it triggers both out-of-plane $s$-wave superconductivity and an out-of-plane bond-order phase ($z$-BOP) instability. The $z$-BOP gives rise to a complex $z$-axis hopping dominated by its imaginary component, which drives out-of-plane currents and induces in-plane ones, spontaneously forming on the vertical plaquettes a loop-current state that breaks time-reversal symmetry. Competition between this loop-current phase and superconductivity yields a dome-shaped superconducting region, with optimal superconductivity occurring near the $z$-BOP quantum critical point. The resulting phase diagram features a pure loop-current region, a low-doping coexistence phase, a pure superconducting state at higher doping, and a correlated metallic state.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2026

Strongly correlated model of acousticlike plasmons persisting across the phase diagram of cuprate superconductors

Layered two-dimensional electron systems exhibit both optical and acousticlike plasmons around the Brillouin-zone center. In the layered cuprate La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$, resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) has detected corresponding acousticlike plasmons in a low-energy regime comparable to that of other collective excitations associated with distinct regions of the cuprate phase diagram. This overlap in energy scale raises the question of whether the acousticlike plasmons are significantly influenced by phase-specific electronic phenomena, including the pseudogap, charge and spin order, superconductivity, and strange-metal behavior. Here we show that a single parameter set of the layered $t$-$J$-$V$ model, which incorporates strong correlations and the long-range Coulomb interaction $V$, consistently describes the acousticlike plasmon dispersion across all currently available RIXS data from the underdoped to the heavily overdoped regime. This transferability of a single parameter set exceeds that of earlier theoretical descriptions and supports a picture in which strong correlations persist into the heavily overdoped regime, while the collective plasmon mode exhibits only limited sensitivity to the phase-specific electronic phenomena that distinguish different regions of the phase diagram.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2026

Strong-coupling theory of bilayer plasmon excitations

Recently plasmon excitations in bilayer lattice systems were studied extensively in the weak-coupling regime. Unlike single-layer systems, these bilayers exhibit two distinct modes, $ω_{\pm}$, which show characteristic dependences upon the momentum and hopping integrals along the $z$ direction. To apply them to cuprates, strong correlation effects should be considered, but a comprehensive analysis has not yet been investigated. In this work, we present a strong-coupling theory to analyze the charge dynamics of a bilayer system, utilizing the $t$-$J$-$V$ model, which includes the long-range Coulomb interaction, $V$, on a lattice. Although our theoretical framework is fundamentally different from the weak-coupling approach, we find that resulting plasmon excitations are similar to those of a weak-coupling theory. A key distinction is that our strong-coupling framework reveals a noticeable suppression of particle-hole excitations, which allows the plasmon modes to remain well-defined over a wider region of momentum. We suggest that the experimentally reported plasmon excitations in Y-based cuprates can be described by the $ω_{-}$ mode, although we call for more systematic experiments to verify this.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2024

Impact of electron correlations on two-particle charge response in electron- and hole-doped cuprates

Estimating many-body effects that deviate from an independent particle approach, has long been a key research interest in condensed matter physics. Layered cuprates are prototypical systems, where electron-electron interactions are found to strongly affect the dynamics of single-particle excitations. It is however, still unclear how the electron correlations influence charge excitations, such as plasmons, which have been variously treated with either weak or strong correlation models. In this work, we demonstrate the hybridised nature of collective valence charge fluctuations leading to dispersing acoustic-like plasmons in hole-doped La$_{1.84}$Sr$_{0.16}$CuO$_{4}$ and electron-doped La$_{1.84}$Ce$_{0.16}$CuO$_{4}$ using the two-particle probe, resonant inelastic x-ray scattering. We then describe the plasmon dispersions in both systems, within both the weak mean-field Random Phase Approximation (RPA) and strong coupling $t$-$J$-$V$ models. The $t$-$J$-$V$ model, which includes the correlation effects implicitly, accurately describes the plasmon dispersions as resonant excitations outside the single-particle intra-band continuum. In comparison, a quantitative description of the plasmon dispersion in the RPA approach is obtained only upon explicit consideration of re-normalized electronic band parameters. Our comparative analysis shows that electron correlations significantly impact the low-energy plasmon excitations across the cuprate doping phase diagram, even at long wavelengths. Thus, complementary information on the evolution of electron correlations, influenced by the rich electronic phases in condensed matter systems, can be extracted through the study of two-particle charge response.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Low-energy plasmon excitations in infinite-layer nickelates

The discovery of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates is presently an important topic in condensed-matter physics, and potential similarities to and differences from cuprates are under intense debate. We determine general features of the charge excitation spectrum in nickelates from two opposite viewpoints: (i) Nickelates are regarded as strongly correlated electron systems like cuprate superconductors and thus can be described by the $t$-$J$ model, and (ii) electron correlation effects are not as strong as in cuprates, and thus, random-phase approximation (RPA) calculations may capture the essential physics. We find that in both cases, plasmon excitations are realized around the momentum transfer $\vq=(0,0,q_z)$, although they tend to be damped more strongly in the RPA. In particular, this damping is enhanced by the relatively large interlayer hopping expected in nickelates. Besides reproducing the optical plasmon at $\vq=(0,0,0)$ observed in Nd$_{0.8}$Sr$_{0.2}$NiO$_2$, we obtain low-energy plasmons with gaps of $\sim 360$ and $\sim 560$ meV at $\vq=(0,0,q_z)$ for finite $q_z$ in cases (i) and (ii), respectively. The present work offers a possible theoretical hint to answer whether nickelates are cupratelike or not and contributes to the general understanding of the charge dynamics in nickelates.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Superconductivity with and without glue and the role of the double-occupancy forbidding constraint in the t-J-V model

The occurrence of retarded (with glue) and unretarded (without glue) pairing is thoroughly discussed in cuprates. We analyze some aspects of this problem in the context of the t-J-V model in a large-N approximation. When 1/N renormalizations are neglected the mean-field result is recovered, where the unretarded d-wave superconducting pairing triggered by the spin-exchange interaction J is obtained. However, the presence of a non-negligible nearest-neighbors Coulomb interaction V(q) kills superconductivity. If the non-double-occupancy constraint and its fluctuations are considered, the situation changes drastically. In this case, V(q) is screened making d-wave superconductivity very robust. In addition, we show that the early proposal for the presence of an unretarded pairing contribution triggered by the spin-exchange interaction J can be discussed in this context.

cond-mat.supr-con↗