A new diagrammatic technique is developed to describe nonlocal effects (e.g., pseudogap formation) in the Hubbard-like models. In contrast to cluster approaches, this method utilizes an exact transition to the dual set of variables, and it therefore becomes possible to treat the irreducible vertices of an effective {\it single-impurity} problem as small parameters. This provides a very efficient interpolation between weak-coupling (band) and atomic limits. The antiferromagnetic pseudogap formation in the Hubbard model is correctly reproduced by just the lowest-order diagrams.

Dual fermion approach to nonlocal correlations in the Hubbard model

Watching fermions transition on site Optical lattices are a promising platform for simulating the many-body physics that occurs in solids. In lattices filled with cold bosonic atoms, “quantum microscopy” makes it possible to watch quantum phase transitions as they unravel. Greif et al. bring a similar capability to lattices filled with fermions, which are trickier to cool but are a closer match to electrons in a solid. Tuning the interaction between the 6Li atoms allowed for the observation of transitions from a metallic phase to a band insulator and then to an interaction-dominated Mott insulator phase. Science, this issue p. 953 Various phases are observed in a system of 6Li atoms in an optical lattice as the interaction between the atoms is tuned. The complexity of quantum many-body systems originates from the interplay of strong interactions, quantum statistics, and the large number of quantum-mechanical degrees of freedom. Probing these systems on a microscopic level with single-site resolution offers important insights. Here we report site-resolved imaging of two-component fermionic Mott insulators, metals, and band insulators, using ultracold atoms in a square lattice. For strong repulsive interactions, we observed two-dimensional Mott insulators containing over 400 atoms. For intermediate interactions, we observed a coexistence of phases. From comparison to theory, we find trap-averaged entropies per particle of 1.0 times the Boltzmann constant (kB). In the band insulator, we find local entropies as low as 0.5 kB. Access to local observables will aid the understanding of fermionic many-body systems in regimes inaccessible by modern theoretical methods.

/pdf/site-resolved-imaging-of-a-fermionic-mott-insulator-1pm2qhxu9j.pdf

Site-resolved imaging of a fermionic Mott insulator

While the breakdown of the perturbation expansion for the many-electron problem has several formal consequences, here we unveil its physical effect: flipping the sign of the effective electronic interaction in specific scattering channels. By decomposing local and uniform susceptibilities of the Hubbard model via their spectral representations, we prove how entering the nonperturbative regime causes an enhancement of the charge response, ultimately responsible for the phase-separation instabilities close to the Mott metal-insulator transition. Our analysis opens a new route for understanding phase transitions in the nonperturbative regime and clarifies why attractive effects emerging from a strong repulsion can induce phase separations but not s-wave pairing or charge-density wave instabilities.

Attractive Effect of a Strong Electronic Repulsion: The Physics of Vertex Divergences.

We present and implement a parquet approximation within the dual-fermion formalism based on a partial bosonization of the dual vertex function which substantially reduces the computational cost of the calculation. The method relies on splitting the vertex exactly into single-boson exchange contributions and a residual four-fermion vertex, which physically embody, respectively, long- and short-range spatial correlations. After recasting the parquet equations in terms of the residual vertex, these are solved using the truncated-unity method of Eckhardt et al. [Phys. Rev. B 101, 155104 (2020)], which allows for a rapid convergence with the number of form factors in different regimes. While our numerical treatment of the parquet equations can be restricted to only a few Matsubara frequencies, reminiscent of Astretsov et al. [Phys. Rev. B 101, 075109 (2020)], the one- and two-particle spectral information is fully retained. In applications to the two-dimensional Hubbard model the method agrees quantitatively with a stochastic summation of diagrams over a wide range of parameters.

Boson-exchange parquet solver for dual fermions

We identify the precise hallmarks of the local magnetic moment formation and its Kondo screening in the frequency structure of the generalized charge susceptibility. The sharpness of our identification even pinpoints an alternative criterion to determine the Kondo temperature of strongly correlated systems on the two-particle level, which only requires calculations at the lowest Matsubara frequency. We showcase its strength by applying it to the single impurity and the periodic Anderson model as well as to the Hubbard model. Our results represent a significant progress for the general understanding of quantum field theory at the two-particle level and allow for tracing the limits of the physics captured by perturbative approaches for correlated systems.

Fingerprints of the Local Moment Formation and its Kondo Screening in the Generalized Susceptibilities of Many-Electron Problems.

Strong repulsive interactions between electrons can lead to a Mott metal-insulator transition. The dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) explains the critical end point and the hysteresis region usually in terms of single-particle concepts, such as the spectral function and the quasiparticle weight. In this Letter, we reconsider the critical end point of the metal-insulator transition on the DMFT's two-particle level. We show that the relevant eigenvalue and eigenvector of the nonlocal Bethe-Salpeter kernel in the charge channel provide a unified picture of the hysteresis region and of the critical end point of the Mott transition. In particular, they simultaneously explain the thermodynamics of the hysteresis region and the iterative stability of the DMFT equations. This analysis paves the way for a deeper understanding of phase transitions in correlated materials.

Andrey A. Katanin

Papers

Bethe-Salpeter Equation at the Critical End Point of the Mott Transition.