This article reviews the physics of high-temperature superconductors from the point of view of the doping of a Mott insulator. The basic electronic structure of cuprates is reviewed, emphasizing the physics of strong correlation and establishing the model of a doped Mott insulator as a starting point. A variety of experiments are discussed, focusing on the region of the phase diagram close to the Mott insulator (the underdoped region) where the behavior is most anomalous. The normal state in this region exhibits pseudogap phenomenon. In contrast, the quasiparticles in the superconducting state are well defined and behave according to theory. This review introduces Anderson's idea of the resonating valence bond and argues that it gives a qualitative account of the data. The importance of phase fluctuations is discussed, leading to a theory of the transition temperature, which is driven by phase fluctuations and the thermal excitation of quasiparticles. However, an argument is made that phase fluctuations can only explain pseudogap phenomenology over a limited temperature range, and some additional physics is needed to explain the onset of singlet formation at very high temperatures. A description of the numerical method of the projected wave function is presented, which turns out to be a very useful technique for implementing the strong correlation constraint and leads to a number of predictions which are in agreement with experiments. The remainder of the paper deals with an analytic treatment of the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model, with the goal of putting the resonating valence bond idea on a more formal footing. The slave boson is introduced to enforce the constraint againt double occupation and it is shown that the implementation of this local constraint leads naturally to gauge theories. This review follows the historical order by first examining the U(1) formulation of the gauge theory. Some inadequacies of this formulation for underdoping are discussed, leading to the SU(2) formulation. Here follows a rather thorough discussion of the role of gauge theory in describing the spin-liquid phase of the undoped Mott insulator. The difference between the high-energy gauge group in the formulation of the problem versus the low-energy gauge group, which is an emergent phenomenon, is emphasized. Several possible routes to deconfinement based on different emergent gauge groups are discussed, which leads to the physics of fractionalization and spin-charge separation. Next the extension of the SU(2) formulation to nonzero doping is described with a focus on a part of the mean-field phase diagram called the staggered flux liquid phase. It will be shown that inclusion of the gauge fluctuation provides a reasonable description of the pseudogap phase. It is emphasized that $d$-wave superconductivity can be considered as evolving from a stable U(1) spin liquid. These ideas are applied to the high-${T}_{c}$ cuprates, and their implications for the vortex structure and the phase diagram are discussed. A possible test of the topological structure of the pseudogap phase is described.

/pdf/doping-a-mott-insulator-physics-of-high-temperature-55r49vtp31.pdf

Doping a Mott insulator: Physics of high-temperature superconductivity

The last decade witnessed significant progress in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and its applications. Today, ARPES experiments with 2-meV energy resolution and $0.2\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}$ angular resolution are a reality even for photoemission on solids. These technological advances and the improved sample quality have enabled ARPES to emerge as a leading tool in the investigation of the high-${T}_{c}$ superconductors. This paper reviews the most recent ARPES results on the cuprate superconductors and their insulating parent and sister compounds, with the purpose of providing an updated summary of the extensive literature. The low-energy excitations are discussed with emphasis on some of the most relevant issues, such as the Fermi surface and remnant Fermi surface, the superconducting gap, the pseudogap and $d$-wave-like dispersion, evidence of electronic inhomogeneity and nanoscale phase separation, the emergence of coherent quasiparticles through the superconducting transition, and many-body effects in the one-particle spectral function due to the interaction of the charge with magnetic and/or lattice degrees of freedom. Given the dynamic nature of the field, we chose to focus mainly on reviewing the experimental data, as on the experimental side a general consensus has been reached, whereas interpretations and related theoretical models can vary significantly. The first part of the paper introduces photoemission spectroscopy in the context of strongly interacting systems, along with an update on the state-of-the-art instrumentation. The second part provides an overview of the scientific issues relevant to the investigation of the low-energy electronic structure by ARPES. The rest of the paper is devoted to the experimental results from the cuprates, and the discussion is organized along conceptual lines: normal-state electronic structure, interlayer interaction, superconducting gap, coherent superconducting peak, pseudogap, electron self-energy, and collective modes. Within each topic, ARPES data from the various copper oxides are presented.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0208504.pdf

Angle-resolved photoemission studies of the cuprate superconductors

This article reviews the effort to understand the physics of high temperature superconductors from the point of view of doping a Mott insulator. The basic electronic structure of the cuprates is reviewed, emphasizing the physics of strong correlation and establishing the model of a doped Mott insulator as a starting point. A variety of experiments are discussed, focusing on the region of the phase diagram close to the Mott insulator (the underdoped region) where the behavior is most anomalous. We introduce Anderson's idea of the resonating valence bond (RVB) and argue that it gives a qualitative account of the data. The importance of phase fluctuation is discussed, leading to a theory of the transition temperature which is driven by phase fluctuation and thermal excitation of quasiparticles. We then describe the numerical method of projected wavefunction which turns out to be a very useful technique to implement the strong correlation constraint, and leads to a number of predictions which are in agreement with experiments. The remainder of the paper deals with an analytic treatment of the t-J model, with the goal of putting the RVB idea on a more formal footing. The slave-boson is introduced to enforce the constraint of no double occupation. The implementation of the local constraint leads naturally to gauge theories. We give a rather thorough discussion of the role of gauge theory in describing the spin liquid phase of the undoped Mott insulator. We next describe the extension of the SU(2) formulation to nonzero doping. We show that inclusion of gauge fluctuation provides a reasonable description of the pseudogap phase.

Doping a Mott Insulator: Physics of High Temperature Superconductivity

The authors study in detail the quantum mechanical model of $N$ Majorana fermions with random interactions of a few fermions at a time (Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model) in the large $N$ limit. At low energies, the system is strongly interacting and an emergent conformal symmetry develops. Performing technical calculations, the authors elucidate a number of properties of the model near the conformal point.

Remarks on the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model

We present a review of the basic ideas and techniques of the spectral density functional theory which are currently used in electronic structure calculations of strongly{correlated materials where the one{electron description breaks down. We illustrate the method with several examples where interactions play a dominant role: systems near metal{insulator transition, systems near volume collapse transition, and systems with local moments.

/pdf/electronic-structure-calculations-with-dynamical-mean-field-244tl5lhyg.pdf

Electronic structure calculations with dynamical mean-field theory

Extensive research has been lavished on the effects of spin-orbit couplings (SOCs) in attractively interacting Fermi systems in both neutral cold-atom systems and condensed-matter systems. Recently, it was suggested that a SOC drives a class of BCS to Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) crossover that is different from the conventional one without a SOC. Here, we explore what are the most relevant physical quantities to describe such a BCS to BEC crossover and their experimental detections. We extend the concepts of the coherence length and ``Cooper-pair size'' in the absence of SOC to Fermi systems with SOC. We investigate the dependence of chemical potential, coherence length, and Cooper-pair size on the SOC strength and the scattering length at three dimensions (3D) (the bound-state energy at 2D) for three attractively interacting Fermi gases with 3D Rashba, 3D Weyl, and 2D Rashba SOC, respectively. We show that only the coherence length can be used to characterize this BCS to BEC crossover. Furthermore, it is the only length which can be directly measured by radio-frequency dissociation spectra type of experiments. We stress crucial differences among the coherence length, Cooper-pair size, and the two-body bound-state size. Our results provide the fundamental and global picture of the BCS to BEC crossover and its experimental detections in various cold-atom and condensed-matter systems.

/pdf/coherence-lengths-in-attractively-interacting-fermi-gases-3258gfeydg.pdf

Coherence lengths in attractively interacting Fermi gases with spin-orbit coupling

We analyze in detail all the possible fixed points of the effective Hamiltonian of a nonmagnetic impurity hopping between two sites in a metal obtained by Moustakas and Fisher (MF). We find a line of non-Fermi liquid fixed points which continuously interpolates between the two-channel Kondo fixed point (2CK) and the one-channel, two-impurity Kondo (2IK) fixed point. There is one relevant direction with scaling dimension $\frac{1}{2}$ and one leading irrelevant operator with dimension $\frac{3}{2}$. There is also one marginal operator in the spin sector moving along this line. The marginal operator, combined with the leading irrelevant operator, will generate the relevant operator. For the general position on this line, the leading low-temperature exponents of the specific heat, the hopping susceptibility and the electron conductivity ${C}_{\mathrm{imp}},{\ensuremath{\chi}}_{\mathrm{imp}}^{h},\ensuremath{\sigma}(T)$ are the same as those of the 2CK, but the finite-size spectrum depends on the position on the line. No universal ratios can be formed from the amplitudes of the three quantities except at the 2CK point on this line where the universal ratios can be formed. At the 2IK point on this line, $\ensuremath{\sigma}(T)\ensuremath{\sim}2{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{u}{(1+aT}^{3/2})$, no universal ratio can be formed either. The additional non-Fermi-liquid fixed point found by MF has the same symmetry as the 2IK, it has two relevant directions with scaling dimension $\frac{1}{2}$, and is therefore also unstable. The leading low-temperature behaviors are ${C}_{\mathrm{imp}}\ensuremath{\sim}T,{\ensuremath{\chi}}_{\mathrm{imp}}^{h}\ensuremath{\sim}\mathrm{ln}T,\ensuremath{\sigma}(T)\ensuremath{\sim}2{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{u}{(1+aT}^{3/2})$; no universal ratios can be formed. The system is shown to flow to a line of Fermi-liquid fixed points which continuously interpolates between the noninteracting fixed point and the two-channel spin-flavor Kondo fixed point discussed by the author previously. The effect of particle-hole symmetry breaking is discussed. The effective Hamiltonian in the external magnetic field is analyzed. The scaling functions for the physical measurable quantities are derived in the different regimes; their predictions for the experiments are given. Finally the implications are given for a nonmagnetic impurity hopping around three sites with triangular symmetry discussed by MF.

Solution of the effective Hamiltonian of impurity hopping between two sites in a metal

In this work, we study strongly interacting spinor atoms in a lattice subject to a 2 dimensional (2d) anisotropic Rashba type of spin orbital coupling (SOC) and an Zeeman field. We find the interplay between the Zeeman field and the SOC provides a new platform to host rich and novel classes of quantum commensurate and in-commensurate phases, excitations and phase transitions. These commensurate phases include two collinear states at low and high Zeeman field, two co-planar canted states at Mirror reflected SOC parameters respectively. Most importantly, there are non-coplanar incommensurate Skyrmion (IC-SkX) crystal phases surrounded by the 4 commensurate phases. New excitation spectra above all the 5 phases, especially on the IC-SKX phase are computed. Three different classes of quantum commensurate to in-commensurate transitions from the IC-SKX to its 4 neighboring commensurate phases are identified. Finite temperature behaviors and transitions are discussed. The critical temperatures of all the phases can be raised above that reachable by current cold atom cooling techniques simply by tuning the number of atoms $ N $ per site. In view of recent impressive experimental advances in generating 2d SOC for cold atoms in optical lattices, these new many-body phenomena can be explored in the current and near future cold atom experiments. Applications to various materials such as MnSi, Fe$_{0.5}$Co$_{0.5}$Si, especially the complex incommensurate magnetic ordering in Li$_2$IrO$_3$ are given.

Quantum incommensurate Skyrmion crystals and Commensurate to In-commensurate transitions in cold atoms and materials with spin orbit couplings in a Zeeman field

We investigate magnetic transitions of repulsively interacting Fermi gases with spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We find that the SOC provides a new and efficient mechanism to realize the itinerant ferromagnetism (FM) which is a long sought state in material science at relatively weak repulsive interactions. The coupling between the density and the spin fluctuations due to the SOC leads to new collective and particle-hole excitations in both paramagnet and FM state, also new quantum to classical crossover regimes near the paramagnet to the FM transition. All these new phenomena are dramatically different from those in conventional Fermi gas without SOC and can be probed by various current experimental techniques.

Itinerant ferromagnetism in repulsively interacting spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas

Recently, several experiments successfully achieved the strong coupling of a BEC of $ N \sim 10^{5} $ $ ^{87}Rb $ atoms to the photons inside an ultrahigh-finesse optical cavity. The strong coupling regime was also achieved with artificial atoms such as superconducting qubits inside micro-wave circuit cavity. These systems are described by the Dicke model where a single mode of photons coupled to an assembly of $ N $ atoms with the same coupling strength $ g $. In this paper, by solving the Dicke model by $ 1/ N $ expansion, we show that at the thermodynamic limit $ N = \infty $, one can achieve the Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) of the cavity photons at sufficiently strong coupling $ g $. At a finite $ N $, we identify an emergent quantum phase diffusion mode inside the BEC phase and also work out many remarkable experimental consequences of this mode such as its low frequency, photon number squeezing properties and photon statistics. The photons from the BEC phase are in a number squeezed state with much enhanced signal/noise ratio which may have wide applications in the field of high resolution, high sensitive measurement and also in quantum information processing. The effects of dissipations due to leaking photons out of the cavity are also briefly discussed. The difference with a Laser beam is stressed. Several experimental schemes to realize the BEC of the photons and detect the phase diffusion mode are proposed.

Jinwu Ye

Papers

Coherence lengths in attractively interacting Fermi gases with spin-orbit coupling

Solution of the effective Hamiltonian of impurity hopping between two sites in a metal

Quantum incommensurate Skyrmion crystals and Commensurate to In-commensurate transitions in cold atoms and materials with spin orbit couplings in a Zeeman field

Itinerant ferromagnetism in repulsively interacting spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas

Photon condensation and its phase diffusion